Enrico Palladino

Seventy-three permits and not a single review anywhere. Enrico Palladino is a one-man plumbing operation out of 17 Louis St in Melrose, and the only public record of his work is the paper trail town clerks keep. It's a revealing trail. The typical job is small and residential — around $3,000 — and the descriptions repeat: rough and finish a bathroom, rough and finish a kitchen, laundry in the basement, run gas to a stove or a tankless water heater. He's pulled permits across a wide arc of eastern Massachusetts, from Quincy and Milton down south to Danvers, Beverly and Marblehead up north, with one Methuen job in 2023. Occasionally something much bigger turns up: a $32,000 bathroom fit-out for a Boston gym, and a $250,000 fixture replacement on Boylston Street. Fifteen of those permits are from the last three years, so this is active, current work — but no customer has published a word about how any of it went. There is nothing to say about pricing, punctuality or finish quality, and inventing a verdict from an empty review record would be worse than saying so. The licensing is the thing to settle before he sets foot in the house. BuildZoom carries three records, all under the same number, 16446: a Massachusetts plumber's licence it labels "License Not Verified" whose last-checked expiration date of May 2024 has already passed, plus two City of Newton registrations — heater contractor and plumbing contractor — both marked inactive and described as cancelled at some point. The page itself flags no active licence on file. None of that was confirmed against the state registry, and directory licence data lags badly, but three lapsed-looking records is enough that you should ask for the current licence number and check it yourself with the state before any gas or plumbing work. If you need small, ordinary plumbing done and can get a personal referral, the permit history at least shows a plumber who pulls permits and gets jobs inspected — which is more than can be said for a lot of the trade. Confirm the licence first.