OK, thanks for the comments.

The Chorus job assessment for this work was ' Relocate BDD pit: this will include the supply & join of new 50pair cable to new pit position and install new terminal in pit, join and extend 2 * ribbonet into the pit, divert the 2 *20mm duct into the pit and join 2 *049 leads into the new terminal. Customer will open up the trench.'.

Their quote for this piece of work was $2373 excl GST ($2729 incl GST). Staggered by this amount I asked for a cost breakdown and was told Labour $234.00 (quite reasonable) and Materials $2059 (?!?). Then things got difficult. Chorus refused to itemise the materials cost, initially to myself, and then to Vodafone.

However in their response to Vodafone they said '...the proportioning of charges below between materials and labour is incorrect, there is more than $200 worth of labour involved with this work ... with any activity such as this, there is a lot more work involved behind the scenes, moving/relocating any element of the network requires network design, management of service outage when cutting services over from the old state to the new, updating the new state in our network records and the work involved with the submission of council consent.'. The last point refers to their claim that '... Moving of the pit (underground enclosure that houses the Network Terminal, in order to do this we require council permissions-in which there is a cost to us)'. Intrigued as to why this would be necessary I rang the Auckland Council and was told by a Building Control officer that the Council had absolutely no interest in this type of activity, that no consents or permissions were required, and that it was purely a matter between me and Chorus.

And there the matter rests. I rang the Commerce Commission with the idea of making a complaint about monopolistic price-gouging but was told the Chorus was a private company, could charge what it liked, and that I should ring my local MP! So much for consumer protection.

I can solve the problem, in one of the ways suggested above, but am nevertheless incensed that Chorus is able to engage in such predatory behaviour without being held to account.