ICloud backups and Photostream not working

Question

My iCloud backups do not appear to be happening correctly. When I first started using iOS5, I had no problem. Both my iPad1 and iPhone4S were backing up nicely to iCloud, and Photo Stream was working correctly. I used my usual Apple ID with iCloud, and have never had a Mobile Me account.
I also have a MacBook Air, which was running Snow Leopard. I then upgraded to Lion. I'm not sure, but it may have been shortly after this that I began to have problems with iCloud (or maybe I am getting my dates mixed up). I enabled Photostream on iPhoto too, shortly after I upgraded.
On both my iPhone and iPad, when I go into Settings/iCloud/Storage & Backup and check my storage details, it was showing that I had not had not backed up in some time. When I click the "back up now" button (while plugged into power and wifi on), it starts to do a manual backup, and appears to start backing up. A little bit of the blue status bar shows, and it says "estimated time remaining…." but never actually shows a time remaining, and after a while just errors saying "There was a problem completing the backup. Please try again later".
The odd thing is, when I hook my devices up to my MacBook, and view them in iTunes, on the "summary" tab (I have "backup to iCloud" ticked) and it DOES give a recent last backed up time. There is a disconnect between what iTunes is saying, and what the devices show. I'm really not sure if my data is getting backed up or not to iCloud! As a precaution, every so often I am switching iTunes back to backing the devices to the MacBook, so at least I am maintaining backups there. Once done, I flick back to the "backup to iCloud" setting.
Through trial and error, I have figured out that the "last backed up to iCloud" time shown in iTunes is a time I have manually tried to do a backup on the iDevice, even though the device itself does not say a backup was completed successfully. If I try to do a "sync" manually via iTunes on the MacBook, it seems to sync and transfer music/photos etc, but the "last backed time" in iTunes does not change.
Photostream has also stopped working. Although it did not stop working at the same time as the iCloud backups, it seemed to be gradual. It started by not synching all the new photos between devices, then just the occasional photo, and now nothing.
To fix the problem, I tried deleting iCloud from both my devices, and switching it off on the MacBook, for a day (including deactivating Photostream). When I went to enable it all again on all the devices, in the hope it would properly start backing up, it just reverted to the old state with the previous symptoms.
I have searched various help forums, but I have not seen anyone else report that iTunes says iCloud backups worked, but on the iOS5 devices is says they are not updating.
Suggestions? How can I get iCloud working correctly, including Photostream?
I had plans to subscribe to the iTunes Match service, but I don't want to pay the money if I am going to continue to have synch/backup issues and it causes problems with match.

Answer 1

I'm havnig a similar problem but just with photos. I have Photostream turned on on both my iPad and iPhone 4S but when I get to a Wifi environment and try to get the photos from my iPhone to upload onto the iPad through iCloud, nothing happens. I have both devices unlocked, I've checked both have Photostream turned on, but nothing. Any ideas?