There are many, many other issues with the chat. It is not so straight-forward as that. You didn't mention that accounts for people that Disney thinks are under-13, don't have the plus sign/blank space thing, immediately to the right of the skull in the bottom left corner. "Safe chat" people sometimes cannot be heard by over-13 pirates, unless the over-13 pirates have the plus sign turned on (I am not certain if that is a new glitch, that appeared this last week, or what.)
More inconsistent, is crew chat (arguably the chat that works "the best" in most situations) where the plus sign is crucial. When two or more over-13 pirates are in crew with an under-13 pirate, sometimes they cannot hear the under-13 pirate's comments if they do have the plus sign turned on. (Sometimes they do, anyhow.)
You didn't describe the work-around (linked accounts) for when the parental controls can't be set properly through DisneyXD. When using the linked-accounts feature to bypass the broken chat, sign in using the "over-13" id, then use the left/right arrows (that appear to the left and right of the account name near the top left) to select your pirate.
One thing that every pirate can do, even under-13 pirates who have had all safe-chat turned off: using the skull in the bottom left corner. The preset-phrases from that skull can always be heard.
Skull at bottom left corner:
Under-13 chat (note the lack of plus/space thing):
Over-13 chat:
Over-13 chat with plus turned on:
Safe-chat (clicking skull so that everyone can hear, no matter what):
Toggle account (linked accounts):
So, I've described above, how things are supposed to work (and often do) but not much can be said about chat, when things start failing. For some reason, chat always seems to be the first thing to go...
can you hear me now? (For me, the broken chat has caused more outbursts of profanity, than SvS.)