Telecom customer service glitch

A landlord, incidentally an ad agnecy owner, set up a phone account for a rented property with short term tenants with a toll bar. The property was managed so the landlord did not visit the premises. 11 months later the landlord was forwarded a surprise letter from a debt collection agency for $800 having not received an invoice from Telecom for 10 months, and having assumed the phone must have been disconnected.  When the customer asked for a breakdown of the bill and to speak to a manager, they were told it would cost $65 - even though the landlord had never seen these bills. She was also told, she would not be put through to a manager, and the matter would not be removed from the debt collection company.  The landlord asked for the bill breakdown to be sent to her correct home address.  It was sent to the wrong address again.  The account breakdown included charges for toll calls, though there was a toll bar in place.  The landlord offered to pay a $600 excluding the tolls, late fees and a small discount for the incompetence in account management by Telecom.  Telecom refused and sent it back to the debt collection company.

Is this bureaucracy gone mad?  Telecom will surely have to pay a hefty fee to the debt collection company. And they didn't set up the file with the correct address in the first place, and used an old account with a phone number that hadn't been live for 8 years.  A foreign call centre person clearly didn't follow correct procedure. So even if they had tried to alert the account holder, their system details were incomplete.  Is waiting for 11 months to collect money inept?  If you pay for a toll bar and then get charged tolls, is it fair that Telecom double dip?  Or is the customer fully liable for the full amount because they should have chased up Telecom?

In any event, the landlord was being proactive and trying to pay money in good faith but a minion was just being rigid.  A good example of how short-sighted staff can ruin a company's reputation.  The ad agency owner wonders just how much the company spent on the recent rebrand, and if perhaps this money would have been better spent in training staff to be human!