I'm not disputing there are people with faults out there who just 'put up with it'. But in my experience, both in Telecoms and the real world, peoples stories are usually enhanced for greater impact.
I particularly love the EU who will begin to tell me they haven't had a connection for weeks, when I politely interrupt them to explain I can see they've had a working PPP Session for the last 3 days (the maximum we engineers can see on WHOOSH). I will then go on to say that I can also see their circuit is 'erroring' far more than it should, or that their attenuation is wobbly (all put over in laymans terms of course).
This basically lets them know I know they're over-egging the situation, but rather than fully embarrass them, move the conversation onto the fact I can see something is amiss with their circuit from initial remote viewing of data-graphs.
What I'm trying to say is most folk will generally appease the guy doing the moaning, by trying to empathise with a similar story of great woe. When it boils down to it though, and when put on the spot ...... it will turn out it's nothing like the yarn they created down the pub over a pint.