128 Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Electric is one of the biggest names homeowners north of Boston bring up when the subject is a mini-split, a heat pump, or a furnace that just died — a Wakefield-based outfit with roughly 1,171 reviews on file since 2016 and a reputation, repeated across dozens of Reddit threads, that swings between two consistent themes: capable, professional work, and not the cheapest option on the list.
On Google, where the company holds 4.9 stars from nearly 4,000 ratings, recent reviews describe the same pattern that shows up everywhere else: a tenant with no hot water gets a callback within the hour and a next-day appointment, a technician tracing mice-chewed AC wiring fixes it quickly at a reasonable cost, and a burst-pipe emergency gets handled by a crew that, in the customer's words, went beyond what was quoted. On Reddit, more than one homeowner has specifically praised the company for not upselling — one described being told, correctly, to leave an aging steam boiler alone rather than pay for unneeded service; another got a same-day AC diagnosis with no pressure to buy more than the fix required.
The record is large enough to also carry real complaints, and they cluster in specific ways. Two detailed Angi reviews from 2025 describe serious dispatch and communication breakdowns — a no-show during the assigned window, a team arriving days earlier than scheduled without warning, and upselling on a water-heater replacement. A recent Google review describes a technician charging $90 to diagnose a heater problem without, in the customer's account, actually fixing or understanding it. Another recent review describes a drainage repair that failed again within two days, with no callback afterward. And an April 2026 update to an original five-star review describes recurring condensate leaks and floods in the years after an HVAC install, with the customer saying every callback came at a steep price. Separately, one Reddit commenter flagged the company's private-equity ownership and argued on that basis it should be avoided.
Price is the most consistent theme across the Reddit record — "not the cheapest," "you pay extra for it," "known for being expensive" recur across threads spanning 2022 through 2026 — though most of the same commenters go on to say the work justified the cost and that they'd use the company again.
128 is licensed for plumbing in Massachusetts and handles a wide range of work — plumbing, HVAC installs and repairs, and electrical work tied to HVAC upgrades. It's a reasonable call for a complex or urgent job, with the trade-off being price and, on a documented handful of occasions, dispatch follow-through.