Empathy's online/offline status doesn't change when using the indicator icon

I used the menu associated with the indicator icon on the top right (the one looking like an envelope) to change my status from 'Offline' to 'Available', but when I opened Empathy, it was still in Offline mode. This used to work in ubuntu 12.04 LTS with its default version of Empathy, and has stopped working since the upgrade to 14.04 LTS which uses Empathy 3.8.6

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: empathy 3.8.6-0ubuntu9.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-27.50-generic 3.13.11
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-27-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3.2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Jun 5 12:18:35 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-04-28 (768 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: empathy
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to trusty on 2014-04-28 (37 days ago)