Gidday Geekzone, long time reader first time poster

I have an interesting issue with Telecom at the moment which I would appreciate some advice on.

The story goes:

In Feburary me and my flat mates moved from our dingy old flat into a slightly less but still rather dingy new one. Before this happened I arranged for a phone line through Telecom to be connected there. A couple of days after we moved in a Telstra rep turned up at our door and told us we were within the cable network in chch and presented us with an offer we couldn't refuse. So we signed up with Telstra for all our home services (Phone line, Digitial Tv and Internet) all through their cable network.

When the Telstra installer was at our house he said that they (being Telstra) would cancel our current home line with Telecom (which we had had for a week) and we didn't need to do anything about it. First month goes by and Telecom bill comes up with a homeline rental and an install fee, all good I thought as we had had the line for a week and I knew this bill would be coming. My next bill for March comes in and theres another charge for a homeline...

I rung up Telecom support, waited patiently while listening to the soothing sounds of the Finn brothers (non-stop) and eventually got through. This is where I got confused. Upon asking about the billing for the non-exsistent phoneline, the Telecom rep explained to me that I would be billed until the call redirection from my old number (the one I had had for a week) had stopped going through (around 3 months). So I would be billed for the next two months plus the last month. The strange thing though is that the lady also explained to me that at the end of that three months I would get a credit on my telecom account (now only used for my cell, under $30 a month) to the tune of the three months line rental (minus wiring fee).

Am I crazy to think this is silly? A telecom credit on my account to the tune of $130 would take me months to eat through, and $38 a month may not seem like much but when your students, especially ones as bad with money as me, its enough to rock the boat over. I don't remember ever being told this would be the case and I must say I've never heard it happen to anyone else I know who's switched.

I have done a search on this board and I can't find any similiar posts, apologies if there are though.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.