I'm having the same problem as well.  I just joined a few days ago and made the mistake of downloading 2 files that don't have many peers but the thing that I notice keeps happening is that the torrent in my client just vanishes after I restart.  I've never seen that before.  I tried opening it up again but it keeps wanting to download it again.  I am on many torrent sites with ratio requirements and I've never had trouble getting my ratio up fast.  I downloaded 2 files that seemed popular and had lots of peers and few seeds.  Looking at them now my upload rate is still really really bad.  If this was something happening on all sites for me then I would think it's my connection but this is the first time I've seen this.  I have 1 day before my download privileges are disabled.  If these 2 seemingly popular torrents with need for seeding don't help I'm not going to just start donating to get more space.  Especially if lots of other people are having similar issues.  I'm using U-torrent.