Technician ‘butchers’ installation
An Auckland couple say a Chorus technician “butchered” their new home after drilling 15 extra holes into an exterior wall during an ultra fibre installation.
And the subsequent repair job was just as bad, the North Shore woman, who did not want to be named, said.
The family are yet to set foot inside the 240sq m, two-storey home, because it’s still under construction.
But Chorus says it’s taken full responsibility for the damage and accepts it and the repair job, “was simply just not up to our standards”.
It has agreed to pay the couple’s builder to fix it up.
The woman said they built two homes on the section but Spark told them only one home was eligible for ultra fibre and a Chorus technician was sent to the property.
“They rock up to this brand new, architecturally designed home that’s been built by builders I just trust my life with,” the woman said. “He only had to install a little grey box but he ended up drilling and redrilling three times, so 15 holes, into the outside of the house and then left it.”
After failing to get much of a response from Chorus staff, she said, she decided to email their chief executive explaining the work was “nothing short of vandalism”.
A technician was sent out to do a repair job, in which he “slapped some plaster” into the holes leaving it looking patchy. “For them to have thought what they had done was acceptable was just a joke.”
She has since refused to let any more Chorus contractors on to the site, instead demanding their own builder fix the botch up with the specific plaster that’s on the house.
A Chorus spokesman said the incident “should not have happened”.
“The decision making here from the technician was not what we would expect and . . . he should have sought support from his manager.”