Call at 3:30 on a winter afternoon with a leaking hot water tank and you may have a new one by nine the next morning. That is what one homeowner laid out in a February 2026 review — Joey on the phone that afternoon, Scott and Evan at the door before nine. Emergency heat and hot water is the through-line at James Thompson Plumbing and Heating.
The shop works out of Woburn and says it has served the area since 1996, with more than 30,000 plumbing and heating jobs behind it. Its BBB page lists a five-employee sole proprietorship owned by James W. Thompson, started in January 1996, carrying an A+ grade without accreditation. The company advertises 24/7 service across Woburn, Medford, Burlington, Lexington, Reading, Wakefield, Winchester, Arlington, Cambridge and Somerville, and names itself a Navien wall-hung installer and Burnham boiler dealer.
Google sits at 4.7 stars over 44 ratings, and the 31 reviews on file from 2021 through 2026 keep circling the same handful of jobs: water heaters, boilers, burst pipes, no-heat mornings. Seven of them were written in the last six months, all positive. Speed and explanation tend to arrive together — a July 2026 customer had a spigot fixed in under an hour and was not charged for the quote, and a January 2026 reviewer who woke to no heat was scheduled within the hour. In a 2025 review, a homeowner whose 40-year-old furnace was flagged during a water heater call wrote that the technician laid out the option without pushing, discounted doing both, and hauled the old units away.
Price is the recurring thing to raise, and it cuts both ways. Several customers call the pricing fair, including a 2026 reviewer who had been quoted twice as much by a bigger name for the same boiler job, while a 2023 customer wrote it cost more than they had hoped and a 2021 three-star review said plainly to expect to be overcharged. The sharpest complaint is a 2024 one-star account: a $149 diagnostic fee charged during the booking call, an email receipt for a subscription to a differently named company, and then no technician that day.
The right call when a water heater quits, a boiler dies mid-cold-snap, or a pipe lets go on a holiday — that is most of what people hire them for, and the recent write-ups are consistent about it. Before they dispatch, get the diagnostic fee, what it covers, and exactly what you are being charged for confirmed in writing.