Cannot open one week's worth of sent emails - error code 45?

I have not been able to access one week's worth of emails sent by me in April (they are in my Sent folder) - I click on the email I want to view, retry three times and then get an Error Code 45. I have no problem viewing other sent emails. I have tried to open the emails on two different computers (one FF, one Chrome), logged out and logged in again, etc. And I've tried contacting Yahoo customer support... how really, really buggy... I found my way out of one closed loop on Help, discovered a few broken links to live Yahoo support, filled out a form, got an auto response on some troubleshooting which I did, the troubleshooting email told me to contact Yahoo if troubleshooting doesn't work and offered a link back to the identical form I filled out before, so I have been getting the same autoreply with the same instructions I've already done. So many questions. 1. I am not an expert, but it seems to me the problem is on Yahoo's side. Does anyone have a link or email to a living breathing human being? Perhaps support chat or sth like that? 2. All of the Help pages on Yahoo were rated with one or two stars out of a maximum five. Two stars seems like too much sometimes.... is Yahoo really this broken? 3. Can anyone recommend another email server? I've been using Yahoo since 1999, when it was actually highly recommended... it just seems like it has become so shoddy... and not being able to access my emails is a serious, serious problem for me... are the employees sabotaging it or something? I hate to go to the G-monopoly but it's what most of my colleagues are recommending (a couple like Hotmail). Sorry for the ranty question...