BB Curve :: 8520 - BBM 6 Statuses Not Updating?

I'm from South Africa and have a Blackberry 8520, carrier/network provider is Vodacom. Up until last week I've had absolutely no problems with the device. I updated my BBM to 6.0.0.129 (if I'm correct) when the update became available on App World and all was great, no problems at all in my 9 months or so of owning the device to be honest. However I soon realized that my statuses were not updating when I was with a few of my friends. I then pulled the battery, and nothing, went a step further and pulled the bat, SIM and memory card, left it for about 5 minutes (usually worked when the networks or the devices I've owned used to give problems) and still nothing, but I found that when I connected to my wifi at home it updated my statues. Though it soon became few and far between and altogether stopped updating even when I was connected to the wifi. A lot of my friends have had problems with their BB's going mad, losing contacts and BBM, devices needing to be replaced etc etc, but I finally built up the courage to try a few new things after a few days of the annoying problem (seeing that my ideas always seemed to work on previous devices I've owned, not strictly Blackberry though, this is my 1st Blackberry). I found the link to BBM5 (via the Blackberry site) on the net, downloaded it and decided to go back to App World and get BBM 6 thinking it might work. WRONG! App World showed that I still had BBM 6, though it showed as uninstalled, and I couldn't get a download option, unfortunately you can't downgrade BBM using App World (why????). So today I hooked up the phone to my PC, using the desktop software I removed App World and finished the process, when my phone finally rebooted I found that my BBM was gone too. So I followed the link through the App World icon and got App World back, after which I found App World was picking up BBM (V6) as installed anyway, even though BBM was gone from my phone. Following the "Update BBM" link that was now on my phone, I got back my BBM (nice intro interface by the way, set display name, restore contact list etc etc, looked good) and restored the conact list, and STILL MY STATUES REFUSES TO UPDATE!! Messages are going through and my display pics show up, however I also found that not all of my contacts pics are showing up at the moment (I did all the PC work and downloading like 40-50 minutes ago), maybe they need to update it or I need to reboot again so that it sync's, but most importantly my statues still don't update, it shows up on my side, the statues messages and busy/available icons show up on my phone, but not to any of my contacts. I'm unsure if my BBM is even linked to my App World anymore, and I refuse to try anymore stunts incase I lose my BBM contacts or BBM and App World completely. I have around 65 contacts, so it can't be the "100+ contacts" stuff I've read up about on the multitude of smartphone/Blackberry forums I've ravaged, even less so 'cause I have BBM6, not 5.