In fact, my pipex at the moment is better than it has been, apart from the email. The last week or two my connection speeds have gone up about 13KB/s. When I first started with them about 6 weeks ago it was connecting at about 109.7KB/s, about 15KB/s slower than NTL, which was a little disappointing. For the last couple of weeks though it has gone up to 123KB/s.
Oh, and in the weeks I've been with Pipex I've had one single spam email. Compared to the hundreds a day through NTL, that's a blessing in itself!