Read a few dozen of this company's Google reviews and you start collecting first names: Philippe and Jake and Steve on the sales side, Todd and Keegan, Elijah and Luis, Juan and his crew doing the work. Across 124 Google ratings averaging 4.6, the praise is unusually concrete for a fence company — installers setting posts so the fence follows a sloped yard, cutting through rocks and stumps that were in the way, one crew pulling an old fence and its vines and standing 140 feet of privacy fence the same day.
Colonial Fence sells, designs, manufactures and installs: vinyl, wood, aluminum, chain link and cellular composite, plus gates, pergolas, trellises, arbors and mailbox and lantern posts. Its BBB profile is accredited and graded A+. Buyers keep mentioning the Norfolk showroom — comparing material samples in person is a real part of how people decide here, and more than one said the sample quality is what won the job.
Then the record splits, and it splits along an unusual line: the complaints that do appear are about the front of the house, not the fence. In an April 2025 review, a customer whose son and daughter-in-law had paid $16,000 for a fence said that when a fallen tree damaged it three months later, the owner wanted $300 up front just to produce a repair estimate. A 2023 reviewer read the contract closely and objected that it binds the customer to the full project cost with no out-clause, takes 50% up front, and leaves the company owning all material until completion. In May 2025 a walk-in called the senior owner "rude, foul mouthed and arrogant"; that July another was told the showroom would not build the custom gates displayed in it.
The one worth pausing on is an August 2025 four-star. The customer called the install sloppy and said the quote and the finished job were different experiences — then added that the owner phoned and yelled at them for leaving the review, and that they raised their rating because of it. Whatever the merits of that install, it is a reason to read the 4.6 with your eyes open.
The reviews also name the owner two different ways, Ken in some and Tom in another, so find out who handles problems after the crew drives away. Off the job, the company shows up locally: it donated materials and labour to Old Colony Habitat for Humanity's Franklin build, and Franklin's own news outlets list it among the sponsors of the Food Pantry fundraiser.
Right for someone who wants to handle the material before buying and wants a big, properly graded fence installed by people who do it every day. Read the contract before the deposit, and get the repair and warranty policy in writing.