who's familiar with debt law?

I technical mistake or typographical error will not excuse you from payment, or from answering a complaint in court, unless it actually prevented you from getting notice (i.e., the summons/writ went to the wrong person).

If the debt is not in fact yours, and/or there is a case of identity theft or fraud, that is a defense and it should be raised immediately. It is not safe to wait for the creditor to get (as often happens) an arbitration award because even though you might never have signed any agreement, the arbitrator may find against you and it could be extremely costly to overturn the finding in court.

If the debt is yours -- i.e., you received the money or the goods -- then the best you could hope for from a misspelling is to make them fix it and waive interest for the period of confusion. Assuming you can plausibly argue that you didn't get the bill, or didn't open it because you didn't know it was yours. That's far fetched, but it often works: the bank wants the money now, and will often waive the interest, and almost always the penalties, if the alternative is to go to court.

GET IT IN WRITING that they won't submit a bad credit report to the credit agencies. And GET THE NAME and write down the time and date of everyone who makes a promise to you over the phone. (They record all the calls, so you could retrieve the promise if you have that info.)

Yes. Period.

Stop looking for ways to steal and behave like an honest, responsible adult.