iOS5 not syncing with yahoo contacts

I do this 3-4 times a day ...

My yahoo contacts disappear on a regular basis from my iPhone. I know that by looking at my latest phone calls; no names, just raw numbers means that the contacts are lost.

I go through the process of deleting yahoo contacts:

Settings->Mail, Contacts, Calendars->Yahoo, turn off contacts.

The iPhone now asks me if I want to delete my yahoo contacts. I press "Delete from My iPhone".

Next, I now switch contacts to on.

I then go to Contacts->Groups, press the refresh button.

Before you think what I have is a solution, think again: I do this 3-4 times a day and it is not enough.

It has become so bad that I will not even Add to Contacts phone calls or emails; I just manually add them to Yahoo every time. Then run the repeat-rinse cycle again.

Yahoo will not listen; their technical support ask me to do their delete account, rejoin game and the contacts don't disappear while on the call, only later.

So I call them back and they make me go through the same process again.

They KNOW that it is a problem but will not help. They just make me waste countless hours.

Apple: I am sorry to say but this is the ONLY issue where Apple Support has not helped and pretty much wasted more than a few days on this.

One of you, Apple or Yahoo, need to fix this. This is basically very OLD technology

What I'd do is first make sure that I load all of my iPhone contacts to Yahoo as described here: How to export iPhone contacts to Yahoo?

Only then enable Yahoo contact sync as per these directions: How to sync Yahoo contacts with Apple iOS device using CardDAV.

Once you have your Yahoo contacts appear on your iPhone under the CardDAV account, navigate to your Contacts app and tap on the "Groups" button on the top left. From the list of Contact accounts, make sure that only your CardDAV account is dislayed.

Finally, navigate to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars and under the Contacts section tap "Default account". Now select your CardDAV account as default on your iPhone.

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/atandt/newcontacts/sync/contactsbasics-11.html

"

If you are running iPhone 4.0 software or newer, you will be able to sync contacts in your att.net Contacts to your iPhone or iPod Touch without plugging it into your computer. You can check your current version by going to Settings, then General. From there choose About, followed by Version on your iPhone or iPod Touch device.

To sync your account:

1. Go to your iPhone or iPod Touch settings application.
2. Tap Mail, Contacts, Calendars.
3. Tap Add Account.
4. Tap Other and then tap Add CardDAV Account.
5. If you are on iOS software version 4.1, you need to enter yahoo.com as the server. If you are using an older version to iOS 4, you can enter carddav.address.yahoo.com.
6. Now type in the Yahoo ID and password you use to sign in to your account and att.net Contacts.
7. Once you click Save, your device will verify your Yahoo ID and password.
8. The next time you open up your iPhone or iPod Touch Contacts app, you will see a page allowing you to see your contacts in att.net Contacts sync into your iPhone or iPod Contact list.
9. If you'd like to have the contacts you add onto your iPhone to sync to Yahoo automatically, you will need to go back into the device Settings application. Click on Mail, Contacts, Calendar. Drag the page down to the Contacts section and change the default Contacts account that you would like to save Contacts to."

I'm running iOS6 on iPad and had to use the carddav.address.yahoo.com...if you get an unable to sync message, clear your cashe in safari and then try again. If you still get an unable to verify message, click "advanced settings", leave SSL "ON" and type in 443 for PORT.

This whole thing is very odd b/c my iPhone is running the same version of iOS and I only have the yahoo e-mail account set up and have mail and contacts selected to sync and it works fine (phone, online and FROM the iPad to the phone - thru iCloud). But for some reason the iPad would not recognize the Yahoo contacts (I had no "default account" under Mail, Contacts, Calendars, which means their was only one contacts account - iCloud). It was very frustrating b/c contacts added on the iPhone would show up online and on the iPad. Contacts added on the iPad, would not show up on the phone (unless I added a new contact while in the e-mail ap from the address bar - then it would show up everywhere). The other crazy thing was, all the contacts could be found in the iPad e-mail ap by typing a new message and then a name in the "TO" box.

Now that I have a CardDAV account set up for contacts on the iPad, I now have a "default account" to select (Yahoo) and everything talks. iPhone, iPad, and Online now sync contacts.