Speakeasy is definitely not easy on the prices, but they've never once put me through any of that crap. I've been able to cut straight to the chase and get some BERT tests done, which usually reveal problems with one of the repeaters. They actually helped me figure out the wiring on my NID to make sure everything there was ok.

And I blame the internet, but I actually expanded the acronym "FSM" incorrectly and was horribly confused until I realized that you meant finite state machine.

But I fully agree with your message about troubleshooting scripts: you just have to learn to path through them. I'm pretty good at navigating them myself, enough so that after Grandma had spent hours on the phone arguing with someone, I went back and had the right guy doing what we wanted in just a few minutes.