Gmail – Importing to Gmail from Yahoo! Mail Plus takes forever

I've decided to migrate over to Gmail, so of course I would like to migrate my old Yahoo emails and forward Yahoo mail to Gmail for a few months until the transition is complete.

Unfortunately, things aren't going smoothly. I first tried the Gmail import facility. It seemed to work and all my email got imported, but then new emails weren't getting transferred (perhaps it only happens periodically, but I would like it to happen faster than once a day). I then tried to resolve the problem by making Gmail get email from Yahoo POP3 (Yahoo Mail Plus has POP3). That worked as far as getting the new emails, but it didn't stop with the new emails and started to also grab old emails and I ended up with duplicate emails in Yahoo.

Finally, I blew away all the imported Yahoo mail in my Gmail and tried to start with a "clean slate" with import (yes, I first deleted the import email address and POP3 stuff).

Now, my import has been going on for a day and only a month's worth of emails are imported. It seems to have stalled. Google says that import may take days, I don't mind that, but they should indicate if it is going to be a trickle or occur in batches.

Here's my questions (I've already tried Gmail forums and they are useless, just clueless users bantering about problems with no resolutions):

• Should I forget about the Gmail import facility and just setup Gmail
  to use my Yahoo POP3 server?

• Is import really only useful if you're importing from a service that does
  not have POP3?

• I've heard an unsubstantiated rumor about Yahoo blocking or throttling Gmail import. It certainly is plausible.

  Is there any truth to this?

• Are there better ways to perform this importing operation?