I know what you mean. Charlie. My local cabinet has been open for well over a year, and I once lost service for like 4 days, because some idiot came along and ripped out all the cables. Fixing it is not so easy. When I called up and reported it at the time (the engineer said he would as well), I just got punted around what seems like every department in NTL, before getting to a guy who said he would deal with it. The only trouble was, I seemed to have interrupted his lunch, and I don't think he knew what a street cabinet was.
But good news. I was trying to find the thead I started a while ago about my street cab, when I stumbled across this one. I'm happy to say, the cabinet has been fixed. It was nothing to do with me, because I just forgot about it like normal, so if anyone on here did anything on here to fix it (expecially Pritch or peachy), I'm eternally grateful