PEREZ LANDSCAPE & CONSTRUCTION

In August 2019 a customer wrote that the Perez crew turned up at 6:30 in the morning, stripped out the old concrete and asphalt, brought in three truckloads of gravel, compacted a six-inch base, laid four inches of asphalt in punishing heat, and was finished by three in the afternoon. A month earlier another customer had written that the company were thieves who steal from the elderly, saying the driveway they were hired to replace never had the existing asphalt and substrate taken out as the quote promised. The written history is that divided, and it is dated: ten of the eleven reviews on file are from 2019, and the eleventh is a one-star Google review from April 2023 that says only DO NOT USE. The customers who were happy in mid-2019 named Rafael Perez personally, crediting a quote produced quickly, a project scheduled for the date they needed, a lawn and sprinkler system finished on time and within budget, and one driveway laid so well the neighbours hired him on the spot. The complaints from the same year are severe and specific. A January 2019 customer said they had paid in full the previous December and then spent weeks chasing work that was never finished. A December 2019 customer said $9,000 of paving had to be done over, with no receipt and no reply to texts or calls. A June 2019 customer described calls that simply went unreturned. Even two of the positive reviews carry a caveat: one August 2019 customer gave four stars while noting the crew had not realised a permit was needed, and a May 2019 reviewer mentioned small details left undone. The headline numbers disagree as sharply as the write-ups. Angi and HomeAdvisor each show 4.2 stars from 51 ratings, 73 percent of them five-star and 10 percent one-star, and describe 21 years in business; Google sits at 2.3 from three ratings. Houzz carries a broad landscape-design and hardscaping catalog, patios, fire pits, water features, decks and sheds, plus a licence number, 084567, that is the platform's own entry rather than anything checked against the state. Those three profiles all give a Medford address and a Greater Boston service area. If you do call, keep the money behind the work. Get a written scope that spells out the excavation depth and the base, tie payments to finished stages rather than paying up front, settle the permit question before anyone digs, and check the licence number with the state yourself.