HICO Lawn & Lock Corp

HICO Lawn & Lock Corp runs two trades out of one Norwood address at 714 Pleasant St: irrigation, landscape lighting and hardscape work on one side, and a locksmith service on the other. The company describes itself as a family business and says it has served Massachusetts and Rhode Island since 1970, though the tenure figure it publishes is not the one every source carries. Most of what homeowners say concerns sprinklers. A customer who had a full system installed in May 2025 wrote that owner Chris oversaw the job with three helpers, that the quote and final price were reasonable and the work excellent, and that he ran spare electrical piping underground for future use without being asked. Another homeowner had HICO install systems at two further properties after being satisfied with the first, in a 2019 account. More recent notes echo the same pattern: a June 2026 customer needing an irrigation start-up inside 48 hours described Chris staying late in traffic rather than rescheduling, and an April 2026 customer said he was punctual, solved the problem quickly and left tips for maintaining the system. The locksmith side is thinner and carries the one serious complaint on file. In an August 2020 review a customer said two of three re-keyed locks failed after the visit, that the locksmith left without testing them, and that a sliding-door lock was left non-functional through repeated missed appointments until another locksmith was hired. HICO replied on the same listing that it had not heard the complaint before it was posted and that the full amount had been refunded. Other locksmith jobs from the same period read very differently — a same-day lock set installed neatly, a fast response, polite crews. The platform numbers are strong: Thumbtack shows 4.8 from 186 reviews with Top Pro status every year from 2021 to 2025 and 343 jobs booked, and HomeAdvisor shows 4.7 from 13 reviews with a 92% five-star, 8% one-star split. The Better Business Bureau gives an A+ grade, though the business is not BBB accredited. Worth asking about before booking: how long HICO has actually been trading, since its own site and Thumbtack claim 56 years while the BBB records the business as started in 2012 and its owner's own LinkedIn dates his ownership to 2019. If the job is locksmith work rather than irrigation, it is fair to ask how a return visit is handled, given the 2020 account. For sprinkler installation and seasonal service in the Norwood area, the recent record is consistent and the owner is on site.