Yahoo Customer Service, You Stink

So, about two weeks ago I noticed that Thing Two's email account wasn't working.  Yes, my kids have email accounts.  They are all tied to mine and I can easily review everything that they send and receive (and I do.  Often.)  They enjoy emailing their grandparents and other relatives and friends, and in Thing Two's case especially, it is practice for him in writing, specifically in holding a thought in his head long enough to type it, short-term memory being one of his weaker areas.

Anyway, it seems that his account has been disabled for no apparent reason.  After a good 45 minutes of aggravation, I finally figured out how to put in a help request.  Now the deal with this is that you can't actually talk to a person.  They send you emails, you answer, and then they have up to 48 hours to get back to you.  It's been almost two weeks, and the issue still isn't resolved: we are still trying to determine that I actually have the right to inquire about his account. "Can you answer this security question?" Okay, 48 hours later: "How about this security question?"  48 hours later: "no, we needed the info from YOUR account, not his."  48 hours later: I get an email saying that my answers are incorrect, except that the account that they are citing is the wrong one.  Get that sorted out, and I start getting emails requesting answers for the correct accounts again.  I live in hope that in perhaps a month or so, I will actually have somebody telling me what's wrong with his account.  Best part is that all I wanted to do was *close it*, and I can't do that without going through this entire ridiculous rigmarole.

Time to switch the whole family to Gmail, maybe??  I know Yahoo is a free email account, but man, I'm getting what I'm paying for here.  Infuriating since they also bombard me with ads at every turn.  Anyone who regularly uses a Gmail account, is it less frustrating?