[exim] (OT) Responsibility of ISPs to provide reliable outgo…

First of all I'm sorry that this message does not pertain to Exim
specifically, but it relates to the consequences of opinions expressed
in previous discussions and there is a lot of expertise here that might
be helpful.

Since many of you believe that residential customers should be forced to
route all their mail through their ISPs' smarthosts, I think it follows
that ISPs have a duty to provide reliable outgoing SMTP to their
customers.

My ISP however claims that "The e-mail is a free service provided by us
and therefore no compensation can be offered for downtime of this
service." (It also claims this about everything other than
connectivity: in other words, everything else is a free service, for
which we have no responsibility, which we provide to people who pay for
an internet connection.)

I believe this violates the (UK) Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 and am
planning to make a formal complaint to Ofcom about it, so I'd
appreciate any arguments [1], comments and references to support this
case.

--
Thanks,
Adam

[1] "An argument is not just a contradiction!" (quoted from memory:
might not be exactly right)