Lapsed policy

I am extremely disappointed with the service we received from Emerald Life in Cape road, Port Elizabeth. We submitted a claim on the 11th of April, after running around with 'outstanding documents' calls. They told us that the bank statement we submitted was not OK they need another one and the stamp on the ID copy is not clear. We furnished them with those documents. subsequently couple of messages kept coming with the one informing us that the claim is "declined due to the policy having lapsed on the 29 February 2020 after two consecutive months of non payments". This was never picked up or mentioned in a week's period of of visiting the branch. On the 12th we visited the bank of the deseased and requested bank statement, we noticed that the debit orders were going through and quickly went to Emerald life offices. They informed us that the letter was referring to the old policy not the current one. To me that is blatant nonsense and incompetence on the level of service they are providing. How come Emerald life respond to the policy that was never queried? I mean there was no communication made based on the active policy and chose to confuse and mislead the entire grieving family. What was gonna happen to the current claim if we did not take further steps? This caused a family a lot of inconvenience and unnecessary expenses.