I really wish I had some way to get a hold of Pippa to tell her two things.
1) INSIST on a technician/cable tech to come out and inspect all of the lines going from her house to the main trunk to make sure they are degraded in any way.
2) Upgrade to the business class internet package, not residential. It's a tax write off anyways, and typically those packages contain penalties against the ISP if their service suffers in any way.