Dorchester Awning Company

Dorchester Awning Company has been building and installing custom awnings out of Middleborough for what its own history page calls 125 years — starting as a maker of surrey tops for horse-drawn buggies before moving into awnings, canopies, and shade structures. The Lampson family took over running the business in 2006 with, according to a 2018 trade-magazine account, no prior awning experience; the company describes itself today as family-owned, with Ahmed M. Loonat serving as executive vice president. For most of its written history, customers describe the same thing: someone picks up the phone, a named salesman walks them through fabric and color choices, and an install crew shows up and finishes quickly — one reviewer clocked a four-person crew swapping fabric on an existing frame in under an hour. One customer even brought in a 20-foot inflatable globe from a university outreach program to get a zipper fixed. Several reviewers came back more than once, buying multiple awnings over the years. That pattern holds from 2019 into 2023 across Google, Angi and HomeAdvisor — Angi and HomeAdvisor both still show a 4.9-star average from the same 54-review set, though neither has picked up a new review since 2023. Google tells a more mixed recent story: its own average sits at 4.2 from 24 ratings, and the last six months brought four reviews split evenly between glowing and one-star. Two of those one-star reviews, from April 2026, describe being charged just to have a trailer looked at without being told in advance, and being quoted $600 to remove an awning and then never hearing back. A September 2025 review says a quote to re-sew awning fabric came in at $4,000, more than three times what another local shop asked. A pair of October 2024 reviews add a deposit that sat for four months behind permit delays, and a complaint that service dropped off after a change in ownership. Before calling, it's worth asking for a firm, written quote up front and confirming who you'll be dealing with if the job runs into a permit or a follow-up repair — the praise for fast, attentive service is real and well documented, but so is a real cluster of recent reviews about pricing surprises and slow follow-through. For a standard install or fabric swap handled promptly, this is a company with a long track record behind it; for anything that needs a permit or a callback, get the details in writing first.