P. A. Darcy Co.

The written record here splits hard along a date line. Through 2022 and into 2023, homeowners around Norwood described small jobs done fast: an attic pull-down stair quoted within ten minutes of the call and finished inside a week in April 2022, a drop-down attic ladder installed that same month with a Westwood permit pulled for it, a bulkhead replaced, a crumbling plaster ceiling redone in November 2022. An August 2021 reviewer described calling late in the evening about an air conditioner flooding the house and getting an immediate visit. From late 2022 the account changes. A November 2022 reviewer paid a fee for a kitchen and living-room estimate and, two months later, had neither the estimate nor a returned call. An October 2023 review described a kitchen, bathroom and basement gutted in June 2022 and left unfinished — three days of work across three weeks, then silence for stretches of four to six weeks, with the customer finally firing him and hiring someone else to finish. In September 2024 a reviewer said their daughter paid $1,600 for plans that never arrived. Then a cluster. In mid-December 2024, three separate first-hand accounts landed within two days: a $1,500 deposit taken for post-water-damage kitchen work followed by unanswered calls, texts and emails; a job paid for and never completed; and a customer who was eight months pregnant describing the same pattern on a kitchen remodel. A December 2024 post in r/massachusetts made the same allegation publicly and referred to court cases. Through late February and March 2025, a wave of one-star reviews arrived from people citing a Boston Globe article about the company rather than a project of their own. One more entry belongs on the record. The October 2023 reviewer posted an update saying that after she went to court over her deposit, she received a letter demanding she take her review down and threatening to contact her employer. Its Massachusetts home improvement contractor registration (194642) is registry-verified active, held by Paul Darcy. The Better Business Bureau grades the business B-, with one complaint on file and no accreditation. Platform averages disagree sharply — 3.6 across 52 Google ratings against 4.4 on a 55-review Porch aggregate and 4.0 from four BuildZoom reviews — and nothing has been written on any of them since March 2025. If you are weighing this contractor, read the 2023 and December 2024 accounts first. The specific thing every complaint has in common is money paid before work started.