Competitive Ad Filter Not Working?

I've not had this problem myself, but some folk are reporting that although they have excluded ads from certain domains appearing in their AdSense ads previously, the filter is not excluding them at present.

Add to this ad groups in Adwords being sorted by click, regardless of how often you try to sort it other ways, like by cost or by CPC....

...and one gets the impression that all of their tech staff are on vacation - not too hard to believe considering Google's extraordinary decision to not work weekends, considering the importance of their role on the web!