--snip--
I think I will contact fellow bistamp customers and we may collect money for a press article to let people know. Will it prompt Bitstamp to change?
I'm glad to hear your issue was solved without having to pay a mining pool
As for gaining attention in order for bitstamp to change: well, you could collect money for a press article, or you could start an investigation by yourself and publish the results on bitcointalk. This forum has a really good pagerank. If you publish something on here, and your thread gains traction, it'll probably end up in the top search results in no-time.
I'd probably start by finding out the hot wallets of bitstamp. Once i found those, i'd monitor them for future and past transactions and map the fee they used to the optimal fee at that moment in time, and the fee they ask their customers for a withdrawal.
If the 100 latest withdrawal transactions all underpay, and you can prove this without a shadow of a doubt, your publication on bitcointalk might make a huge difference in the way they handle customers (or maybe they just won't care, they might think they're to big to fail and don't care about negative stories leaking out)