On 2 June 2021, 27 people left a Google review for C J Cant Plumbing in Frankton. Seven more followed the next day. By the end of 2022 the Hamilton plumbers had 147 new reviews in two years, and then the flow almost stopped: five reviews in 2023 and 2024 together, ten in the last 12 months. The business behind them has been plumbing in the Waikato for decades, and the reviews that do arrive now keep naming the same plumber, Duncan. We read all 197 Google reviews and checked the website and the brand search for this fifth review in our series after the guide to plumbers in Hamilton.
Quick take
- C J Cant Plumbing works from 61 Colombo Street, Frankton: plumbing, gasfitting and drainlaying for homes and businesses, backed by the Master Plumbers guarantee.
- 4.76 average from 197 Google reviews (Google rounds it to 4.8). Three in four of them were written in 2021 and 2022.
- Customers praise professional work, quick visits and friendly staff, and 31 of 134 written reviews come from people who have used C J Cant before or plan to again.
- No prices on the website, although one page is titled “Plumber Costs”. The site does promise fixed-price quotes.
- SEO4 Audit Score: 19 out of 30. Reviews 5, search 7, marketing 7.
Jump to
| C J Cant Plumbing at a glance | |
|---|---|
| Google profile | C J Cant Plumbing Ltd, category Plumber |
| Address | 61 Colombo Street, Frankton, Hamilton |
| Phone | 0800 252 268 |
| Services on the website | Residential and commercial plumbing, gasfitting, drainage, maintenance, renovations and new builds |
| Hours on Google | From 8 am; the website offers 24/7 emergency call-outs |
| Google rating | 4.76 (shown as 4.8) from 197 reviews, 2 November 2026 |
| Prices on the website | None; fixed-price quotes promised |
Ten years of reviews
The first Google review is from October 2015. Then four years of almost nothing, 18 reviews in 2020, and in June 2021 a wave.
Fifty reviews arrived in June 2021, 27 of them on the 2nd. That is too many for one day’s jobs, so somebody asked, probably by email or text to past customers. Asking is allowed and sensible. The reviews read like real customers: people who have used C J Cant “for years” or “about 25 years”, a toilet that leaked during the 2020 lockdown, a Sunday leak. Six of the 37 reviews written between 2 and 4 June gave four stars, which a manufactured batch rarely does.
The asking clearly went on for a while. From July 2021 to June 2022 reviews kept coming at 3 to 15 a month. Then, from July 2022, they slowed to a trickle: rarely more than two a month, and most months none.
Replies follow a different pattern. In 2021, the busiest year, none of the 93 reviews got an answer. In 2025 someone replied to all 12, with the customer’s name and usually the plumber’s (“so glad Duncan sorted this out for you”). In 2026 two of seven have a reply, the last on 1 April. Overall, 24 of 197 reviews have an owner reply.
Rounding down
The website says “over 35 years”. Facebook says over 35 years too. Google says 40+ years in business. Plumbers usually round their time estimates up; this is the first business we have seen round its own history down.
What customers praise
Of the 134 written reviews, 59 call the work professional, efficient or expert, 54 mention a quick response and 49 friendly or helpful staff. Price comes up in 23, almost always as fair or good value; one customer in 2021 was pleased with an after-hours visit with no call-out fee.
Loyalty stands out. In 31 reviews the customer has used C J Cant before, for years in some cases, or says they will call again. One 2025 reviewer quoted what they called the company’s slogan: every customer a repeat, referring customer.
And then there is Duncan. Since January 2025, 18 written reviews have come in and Duncan is named in 10 of them, for a leak under a concrete driveway, a blocked drain, a job other plumbers had said couldn’t be done. Paul appears in four reviews over the years, Jordan in the most recent one, from October 2026, and the office gets a thank-you too. Across all written reviews, 14 of 134 name someone.
The eight low ratings
Eight reviews give three stars or fewer, 4% of the total. All are from 2017 to 2022, and none has a reply.
Three are about follow-up rather than plumbing. In 2017 a customer got a first quote and then heard nothing more; in 2020 another says nobody turned up to quote; in 2022 a cyclist complained about a C J Cant van and says nobody returned the call. One 2020 reviewer couldn’t get the online job form to work. Two are about how the job was run: bolts left on a lawn in 2021, and a plumber who spent over an hour away buying parts even though the customer had sent photos first.
The most serious, from December 2021, says two failures traced back to earlier work by the business, including a hot water cylinder the customer says was installed without the right valves, and damage to a kitchen floor. We can’t judge the plumbing. We can say that a review like this, with no reply for almost five years, is the first one many customers read when they sort by lowest rating.
What a customer can take from this: confirm the visit time by text, send photos and ask whether the van will carry the parts, and keep the written quote.
Prices: what we could find
C J Cant’s website has a page whose title starts “Plumber Costs”. Google shows it in the sitelinks under the brand search as “Plumbing Costs”. Open it and you get the Request A Job form: 29 words and no prices. Someone searching “cj cant plumbing prices”, a phrase Google suggests, lands on a page that doesn’t answer the question.
What the site does say is useful. Under “Why CJ Cant”, it promises “Fixed price quotes not ‘estimates’” and a detailed quote from the start. The commercial maintenance page says business clients aren’t charged extra for emergency call-outs. Fittings come from suppliers such as Rheem and Micro Plumbing.
The only price we found came from a customer. In a Reddit thread for Hamilton about a year ago, someone said C J Cant charged $85 an hour plus materials for a leaking pipe. One person, one job, and no word on GST. For comparison, Waikato plumbers that publish their rates charge $130 to $145 plus GST for a weekday first hour including any call-out fee, according to our Hamilton guide.
Budget and questions
Before you ring C J Cant: budget and questions
C J Cant doesn’t publish its rates. Choose the job and the time, and see a budget at the rates other Waikato plumbers publish, plus what C J Cant itself promises for that kind of job.
Budget: published Waikato rates in SEO4’s guide to plumbers in Hamilton (October 2026), not C J Cant prices. Weekday first hour $130 to $145, extra hours $90 to $105; after hours first hour $200 to $260, extra hours $160 to $220; public holidays first hour $300 to $450, extra hours $200 to $250; all plus GST, parts extra. Promises: cjcant.co.nz, viewed 2 November 2026. A guide, not a quote.
How the check works
C J Cant doesn’t publish rates, so the budget uses the rates other Waikato plumbers publish, from our guide to plumbers in Hamilton: the first hour at each business’s own price, further hours in proportion, GST at 15%, parts not included. The promises come from cjcant.co.nz on 2 November 2026: the Master Plumbers guarantee, fixed-price quotes, 24/7 call-outs for gas leaks, and no extra charge for emergency call-outs for commercial clients.
Against other Hamilton plumbers
C J Cant has more reviews than most of Hamilton’s plumbers, 197, but over the last 12 months it collected 10. Optiplumb and JT Carter Plumbers collected about 150 each, KZN Plumbing 50 for its Hamilton profile and Hamilton Plumbing 21. Only Pipeline Plumbing, with 5, added fewer. On average rating C J Cant’s 4.76 is behind the 4.87 to 4.96 of the three busiest.
In search, age helps. For “plumbers hamilton” on 2 November, cjcant.co.nz was the fourth ordinary result, after Hamilton Plumbing, a MoneyHub list and Optiplumb. It wasn’t in Google’s map pack, where Hamilton Plumbing, Optiplumb and F B Hall & Co showed for “plumber hamilton”; on Google’s places list for “plumbers hamilton nz” on 1 November it was fourth.
SEO audit
From here on the article is mostly for the business and for other tradies. Looking for a plumber? Go to the common questions.
The brand search
Search “cj cant plumbing” and the website comes first, with six sitelinks, then Facebook (183 followers), directories and the Reddit thread. Nobody advertises on the name. Google suggests “cj cant plumbing reviews”, “prices” and “owner”, and for “cj cant plumbing prices” our own Hamilton guide is on the first page, because C J Cant’s site doesn’t answer.
One directory, Finda, still lists “C J Cant Ltd” at 77 Colombo Street with an 07 number and a 2.3 rating from two reviews. Old listings like this confuse customers and, a little, Google.
The Google profile
The profile has the plain business name, the Plumber category, a description that mentions plumbing, drainlaying, gasfitting and roofing, the 0800 number and a link to the website for appointments. The hours say the business opens at 8 am, and a Sunday visitor sees “Closed”. The website, though, offers 24/7 emergency call-outs on several pages, and earlier reviews describe Sunday and after-hours visits. If the after-hours line works, Google should say so: either 24-hour hours or a clear note in the description.
The photos mix job shots with what looks like a stock image of a sink. A few photos of the team, the vans and recent jobs would do more, especially with Duncan in so many reviews.
The website
cjcant.co.nz is a WordPress site built on Elementor. The basics are there: a tap-to-call 0800 number at the top, a Request A Job button and form on the home page, the Master Plumbers guarantee in the first screen, a meta description on every page we checked, service pages for residential and commercial plumbing, gasfitting, drainage, maintenance and renovations, and a testimonials page.
The details show its age:
- The main heading is “Welcome to C J Cant”. The title has the city, written as “Hamilton WKO”, an abbreviation customers don’t search for.
- The footer says “© Copyright 2018” and still has a Google+ button. Google closed Google+ in 2019.
- The service pages are short, 78 to 131 words each. A customer with a blocked drain at 9 pm wants more than that.
- There are two residential gasfitting pages. The newer one, from May 2026, gives (07) 957 8700 as the number; every other page uses 0800 252 268.
- The schema describes an Organization with no address, rather than a local plumber with the Frankton address.
- Seven of the 12 images on the home page have no alt text.
- The years don’t match: “over 35 years” on the site, 40+ on Google.
We couldn’t test mobile speed: PageSpeed Insights didn’t finish on 2 November 2026, so that check scores 0 until it does.
Footer archaeology
The Google+ button in the footer is the one C J Cant contact that has been out of service since 2019. Every tap and pipe in the reviews got fixed faster.
SEO4 Audit Score: 19 out of 30
Thirty checks, the same for every business in the series. They measure what customers and Google can see online, not the plumbing. C J Cant scores one more than JT Carter Plumbers (18) and two fewer than KZN Plumbing, Optiplumb and iPlumber (21 each). Our Hamilton guide uses a different scale, the Local Score.
| Part | Passed | Failed or not checked |
|---|---|---|
| Reviews (5/10) | 197 reviews; no day with 5 or more in the last two years; replies, when they come, name the customer and the job; 4% at 3 stars or fewer; staff named in 14 of 134 written reviews | Average 4.76, below 4.8; 10 reviews in the last 12 months; replies to 24 of 197; none of the 8 low reviews answered; no second platform with 10 or more reviews (Facebook shows 5 recommendations) |
| Search (7/10) | Plain business name; phone and website match; meta descriptions; a page for each main service; tap-to-call; HTTPS and working internal links; own site first for “cj cant plumbing” | H1 “Welcome to C J Cant”; mobile speed not tested; no LocalBusiness schema |
| Marketing (7/10) | Guarantee and 35 years in the first screen; Master Plumbers guarantee explained; fixed-price quotes; real job photos on Google; job form on the home page; testimonials on the site; no competitor ads on the name | No prices, despite a page titled “Plumber Costs”; no social post in the last 60 days that we could confirm; the top Google question (what a plumber costs an hour) not answered |
How we score
- Reviews: (1) rating 4.8 or higher; (2) 100 or more reviews; (3) 20 or more in the last 12 months; (4) no day with 5 or more reviews in the last two years; (5) replies to most reviews; (6) replies to every review at 3 stars or fewer; (7) replies are personal, not one template; (8) reviews at 3 stars or fewer under 5%; (9) a second platform with 10 or more reviews; (10) staff named in 10% or more of reviews.
- Search: (1) the Google name has no added keywords; (2) the Google phone and website match the site; (3) service and suburb or city in the page title and H1; (4) a meta description; (5) mobile PageSpeed score of 50 or more; (6) LocalBusiness schema; (7) a page for each main service; (8) tap-to-call on mobile; (9) HTTPS and no broken key links; (10) the business’s own site in the top 3 for its name.
- Marketing: (1) a clear promise above the fold; (2) prices or “from” prices; (3) a guarantee explained; (4) a clear speciality or offer that sets the business apart; (5) real photos or case studies; (6) a quote or booking within two clicks; (7) reviews shown on the site; (8) a social media post in the last 60 days; (9) the top “People also ask” question answered on the site; (10) no competitor ads on the brand name, or the business defends it.
- Each check scores 1 or 0. A check we couldn’t run or confirm on the day scores 0 until we can, and we say so. The rating check uses the exact average, not Google’s rounded figure.
Own C J Cant Plumbing?
We’ll send you the full checklist behind this review, free: all 30 checks, what passed, what didn’t and the fix for each, starting with the quickest. No call, no obligation. Ask for your checklist.
A plan for more jobs
C J Cant doesn’t need to win trust from scratch. It has decades of work, loyal customers and a plumber people name. The job is to make that visible again.
| What | Why, from our data | Effort | Likely effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ask every customer for a review, every week, with a link | 10 reviews in 12 months; the 2021–22 asking worked | Low | High |
| Put “from” prices on the costs page | The page called “Plumber Costs” has no costs; Google suggests “cj cant plumbing prices” | Low | High |
| Make Google hours match the 24/7 call-outs | Google shows opening at 8 am; the site promises 24/7 for emergencies | Very low | High |
| Reply to the eight low reviews, calmly, even the old ones | None has a reply; they sit at the top when customers sort by lowest | Very low | Medium |
| Team and job photos on Google and the site, with Duncan and the crew | Duncan is in 10 of 18 written reviews since 2025 | Medium | Medium |
| “Plumbers Hamilton” in the H1, “Waikato” instead of “WKO” | H1 is “Welcome to C J Cant” | Very low | Medium |
| LocalBusiness schema with the Frankton address and hours | Only an Organization without an address | Low | Low to medium |
| Merge the two gasfitting pages and use one phone number | Two pages, two numbers | Low | Low |
| Regular Google and Facebook posts | No recent post we could confirm | Medium | Low to medium |
Marketing ideas for C J Cant
- Lead with the fixed price. Few Hamilton plumbers promise a fixed-price quote in writing, and the low reviews show what happens without one. Say it on the home page, in the Google description and on every quote.
- Tell the long story. Customers mention 25 years with C J Cant; the website says 35, Google says 40+. Pick the true number, put it in the H1, and show a photo from the early days next to one of today’s vans.
- Use the commercial clients. The site names schools, the local council and AA Home Response. A short page for property managers and businesses, with the no-extra-charge emergency promise, could bring repeat work.
- Recruit and market at once. The careers page is live, and an Instagram post shows one of its apprentices graduating. Posts about new plumbers and apprentices show a growing team and help hiring.
- Answer the price question. A page with typical jobs, such as a tap washer, a blocked drain or a hot water cylinder, with from-prices and what changes the price, would answer the search Google already suggests.
For plumbers
C J Cant shows what a year of asking can do, and what happens when the asking stops. What would asking every week do for yours?
A review habit or a review drive?
C J Cant collected 50 Google reviews in June 2021 and 10 in the last 12 months. Put in your own numbers and see what asking every customer, every week, adds up to.
Your own estimates; the defaults are an example, not C J Cant’s figures. For comparison, Optiplumb added 150 Google reviews in the 12 months to 1 November 2026 and answered 148 (SEO4 crawl).
Quote and Job Organiser: SEO4’s free app
A fixed-price quote only works if it reaches the customer before the job starts. Quote and Job Organiser, a free Android app on Google Play, puts it together on site. No account, no subscription, no ads, and your data stays on your phone.
- A quote with labour, parts, call-out and GST, sent as a PDF by email, SMS or WhatsApp.
- An accepted quote becomes a job, with the customer and price carried over.
- Photos of the fitting before you go to the merchant, and of the finished job after.
- A calendar of the month’s jobs and what has been paid.
We also build custom apps for trade businesses: your branding, fixed-price templates for common jobs, job sheets for a team of plumbers, a review request sent when a job is closed. Send us your idea, even a rough one. It costs less than most owners expect. Tell us what you need.
Common questions
Its customers rate it well: on 2 November 2026 it had a 4.76 average from 197 Google reviews, which Google shows as 4.8, and 170 of them were five stars. Customers most often praise professional work, quick visits and friendly staff, and many have used the business for years.
It doesn’t publish rates. Its website promises fixed-price quotes rather than estimates. Other Waikato plumbers that publish rates charge $130 to $145 plus GST for a weekday first hour, so ask for the hourly rate and a written quote when you ring.
Yes. Its website lists plumbing, gasfitting and drainage for homes and businesses, and offers 24/7 call-outs for emergencies and gas leaks. Its Google profile lists opening hours from 8 am, so ring 0800 252 268 rather than relying on the “Closed” label.
From 61 Colombo Street in Frankton, Hamilton, across Hamilton and the wider Waikato, for homes, businesses, schools and councils.
Call 0800 252 268, email info@cjcantltd.co.nz or use the Request A Job form on cjcant.co.nz.
Sources and how we checked
- Google reviews: SEO4 collected every public Google review of C J Cant Plumbing Ltd (197) on 2 November 2026, with date, stars and owner reply. Other Hamilton plumbers were collected on 1 November 2026. Themes and names are keyword matches in reviews with text; reviews are paraphrased without reviewers’ names.
- Google search: “cj cant plumbing”, “cj cant plumbing reviews”, “cj cant plumbing prices”, “plumbers hamilton” and “plumbers hamilton nz” on 1 and 2 November 2026, set to New Zealand. Results depend on where and when you search. The Google profile screenshot was taken by SEO4 in November 2026.
- Website: cjcant.co.nz, 17 pages from its sitemap checked on 2 November 2026.
- Other sources: Facebook and Finda listings and a Reddit r/thetron thread as shown in Google’s results on 2 November 2026.
- Market rates: SEO4, Plumbers in Hamilton, October 2026, and the published rates it cites.
- Screenshots of Google and of the business’s website are used for review and criticism and credited in each caption.
About this review
SEO4 is not connected with C J Cant Plumbing. They are not our client and did not pay for or see this review before publication. We review what customers and Google can see online, not the plumbing itself.
If you work at C J Cant Plumbing and something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it: contact SEO4.
Corrections: none so far. Facts checked on 2 November 2026.
Our Hamilton plumbers series
- Plumbers in Hamilton: $104 to $518 for the first hour, depending on when the pipe bursts
- Optiplumb reviews: 5.0 from 475 customers, and an award its website doesn’t mention
- iPlumber reviews: Master Plumber of the Year 2020, and 10 Google reviews in 2026
- JT Carter Plumbers reviews: 134 Google reviews in 2026, and a website still titled Te Aroha
- KZN Plumbing reviews: 234 Google reviews, two plumbers, two cities and two websites
- SEO in Hamilton
- C J Cant Plumbing reviews (you are here)
A long history that Google doesn’t show?
We check what customers and Google see when they look you up: profile, website, reviews and the search for your name, next to your competitors. You get a short list of fixes in the order we would make them. Anywhere in New Zealand.