Cheers for all the suggestions guys...I hadn't considered bin mode because it's 'supposed' to be a tab delimited plain text file...but there is a possibility there I suppose.
I think the only time I have tried running the script manually it has been with a dummy file (that I generated in vi) and the manual transfer that works with the proper file was done interactively from the ftp prompt (when I usually instinctively go to bin mode anyway)
curl looks interesting though
sadly it's going to have to wait until tomorrow now...I don't have access to the box tonight to play