I don't think it's fair to say "The correct answer to this is to find a printer who knows his job" - the correct answer would be for Adobe to not release software with a feature that doesn't work correctly or at least have updated it over the years to do so.
The fact is not all printers use Adobe software, several we use won't touch it and only accept Corel compatible files - then I require a quick simple convert to paths as I quite rightly expect the software to do.