I don't have an answer for your problem, but know the feeling when you get no reply ;-)
Have you visited:
http://www.php.net/manual/ref.ftp.php
This is the annotated manual to which many people contributed with their experiences and in most cases examples.
BTW; I've never used PHP's ftp functions so don't look at me, but perhaps posting your question along with some example code could help in getting an answer, perhaps there's something you are doing wrong in your code someone else would see in a minute!
