At this point, I searched online to see if other people had reported this same symptom and had found a solution. There were some reports of this issue, but not many. One suggested fix was to switch to Skype's "Offline" mode before making the Privacy change. Another was to go the the Application Support folder in the Home Library and navigate to Skype -> . Inside this folder is a file named config.xml. Delete it.

We tried both suggestions. Neither had any effect.

Our next move was to contact Skype support. This proved to be an arduous task in itself, as Skype does not make it easy to discover their support email address. I'll spare you the details. Suffice it to say that we finally did get a response from Skype. What was it? "Delete the config.xml file." We replied: "Been there. Done that. No go."

Their next suggestion was to delete Skype itself, including all of its accessory files, from the drive and start over with a new installation. Their email provided a nine-step set of instructions on how to do this. We followed them. It didn't help.

By this point, Skype tech support was getting as frustrated as we were. Our initial contact person bumped us up to a higher level of support. This person, at last, offered a suggestion that led us to the solution that worked. Ready for the big reveal? Here it is: