PwC were auditors of a business we bought - they had been the auditors for 8 years. We decided to change to a smaller audit firm because of cost. Last audit PwC did was for year ended 31 Dec 2011. PwC charged us R600k for the 2011 audit. Small firm charge for 2012 AFS is about R200k i.e. one third PwC 2011 cost but we understand that big 4 audit firms are expensive. Disappointment came when our new auditor needed info from PwC 2011 audit working papers. Anytime we wrote to them they advised they need to charge us to go and look in their file. And they displayed a completely un-cooperative attitude. They just wanted us to leave them alone. They kept on saying we must ask our ex manager. The complication was that we were in a gross negligence legal battle with the ex manager of the business so we could not get the info from the ex manager. We needed PwC to just email us the information which was already in their working papers and every time we asked we were told 1. extra charges would apply 2. we must ask the ex manager because they already gave the info to the ex manager and they don't want to send it again. Would have expected more cooperation from big 4 audit firm after we paid.
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