Skype stuck while signing in on Android

Yeah, the title pretty much says it all. I tried logging into Skype, which has been sitting dormant on my phone for pretty much a year or two, and somehow it just sits and spins on that stupid "signing in" screen. After watching the dots circle around for half an hour, I give up and try again. And again. Then I reboot the phone and try again. And then I reinstall Skype and try again. Nothing I do will make it sign it.

Then I reluctantly go to Google, where other people have had this exact problem with absolutely no solution from anyone. I won't link to any of these sites, but if you Google "Skype stuck on signing in Android," you'll find plenty of them, all with two-year old posts on how "This is happening to me, too! Has anyone found a solution?!" Nope. No solution.

Oh wait I got it to work now.

Want to know how? OK, I don't know exactly why, but my phone started working again after I did a couple things. Not sure if these will work for you, but give it a try.

1. I sign up for a new damn account. Don't panic, I was still able to log back into my old one, but out of sheer frustration, I created a new Skype account with my Skype app. Guess what? It logged in fine and started bugging me to verify my phone number and add contacts. That was all I needed to make sure the app could actually get past the sign in screen.
2. I signed out of this new account, and then signed in on the web to my account and found I had some "inactive credits" for some reason. I reactivated them.

After doing these two things, I logged back into my old account, and it seemed to work fine. Not sure if that was just a coincidence, but maybe it'll work for you.

There, Internet, was that so freaking hard?