Statement To the Moultrie Company Management
 
February 24, 2006

Moultrie Camera Management,

  We at www.chasingame.com presently own several of your cameras. We were lucky to have purchased cameras that seem to work as designed. This is definitely not the case with a large number of folks that have sent us mail daily complaining about your product line. It seems that the act of buying one of your cameras is like playing the Power Ball Lottery. A persons chance of winning seems to be getting smaller and smaller as your new models are placed on the market. We have folks that have some of your cameras that have minor difficulties such as moon phase issues and are in fear of returning them because the company might just replace it with one of their lemons.

  You have to realize that the trail camera buying public is becoming more savvy and it is because of places like our site that tries to keep them informed so they do not end up with a product that is less than functional. We know that your company has been quick to return new products for those cameras that were sent back because of operating issues. For this we commend you. To replace a returned item with an item that has the same problem "not just once but up to 5 times" is inexcusable.

  Now comes the issue of customer service. They are very nice and somewhat up to par on most issues, but when it comes to questions of a technical nature (remember your customer is a hell of a lot smarter today than they were two years ago) they want answers. All issues dealing with firmware and such should be made available to your customer service folks so when they are asked a question, we do not get that stuttering "I don't know" thing.

  With all these issues, these folks, including myself, have made attempts to get answers by E Mail and by phone. You sir, or your representative have failed to return these calls. We have strongly recommended your products in the past but as of today we are pulling that recommendation. We are not a giant like Moultrie, But Sir be advised that we have over 10k visitors per month that are all either past, present, or future users of scouting cameras. We have only one mission and that is to inform the buying public about scouting cameras. Hopefully you will change your ways and make an effort to address these issues. I make it a daily task to scout all the popular hunting/outdoor forums and pay attention to what I am seeing about scouting camera issues and believe me your camera issues are at the top of the list.

Sincerely,

Bill Poulson

 
  March 11, 2006 - Update
 

Moultrie Local Rep Meeting
 

  I Had a long meeting with our local rep David from Moultrie this morning. It seems that things at the big headquarters at Moultrie are going through some major changes. David explained that the whole marketing scheme at that company, has or is in the process of being revamped to better serve the customers. He explained that the man responsible was not aware of the progressing problems that we have been trying to get addressed, and was totally surprised to hear of the communication difficulties that I outlined in the statement to Moultrie. I now have the cell number of this person and I will be in touch with him come the first part of next week. We discussed the new products for 2006 and he supplied me with the 2006 brochure. The information in this pamphlet is very basic but it shows that the GS-200 will remain basically the same but the GS-100 will move up from 1.3 MP to 2.1 MP and will handle a 1 gig SD card. We also talked about some future new cameras that are in the works to include an IR version supposedly color day and night. He had no target date for the release of the new cameras except to say that they are in the works. I should have a much better answer by the end of next week so keep checking back. Bill

 
 

March 13, 2006 - Update

 

  I Spent a long time on the phone with one of the management persons at Moultrie. First off he is giving everyone who experienced communication problems, be it by phone or by E mail a big apology. It seems that their normal amount of customer service personnel has dropped due to either promotion of other reasons and they are very shorthanded in that department but are working on correcting this. He promised that those tech support folks will also be better informed about issues such as firmware and  those hidden upgrades to their cameras. In their world of going out and having these cameras developed and build under contract, there has been a gap in some instances where the end item actually arrives to be put on the market before the all the information associated with the new item is made available for the customer. While I was in the process of writing up this information he called me back and asked for me to hold off with any of the technical and other issues we discussed because they are going to have a big set down and go over all issues and put it out to us by E mail and that way we can just post their message so everything will be totally accurate. This should happen later on this week. I feel that Moultrie is trying very hard to get on top of every thing and be back in the good graces of all customers by making all the appropriate  adjustments. They just want us to give them a chance. Bill

 

 
 

03-20-2006 Update on Moultrie GS-100 and GS-200:

The following is a list of things that we have learned by way of E mails, Outdoor Forums, Phone conversations, word of mouth and from our personal experience. I will say that the cameras that we purchased and tested seemed to perform very good until recently, we have had one of the GS-200s to show some signs of problems. (SD card lock and White out)

  • Poor sensing.
  • SD card locked indication on LCD but camera functions normally.
  • Bad battery life.
  • Severe difference in trigger time from day pictures to flash pictures.
  • Whiteout pictures randomly.
  • Moon phase quits being displayed on pictures.
  • Flash pictures have saucer eyes.
  • Limited sensing range. (sometimes corrected by the “fix.” (sensor lens replacement)
  • Camera just dies and will not boot up with fresh battery. 

Most of these problems were discussed with a Moultrie management person and we were promised an answer by E mail last week. As of yet we have not received any word.

 
 

07-01-06 Update on Moultrie M-200:  A very busy last couple months at Moultrie. They have continued to support their customers through their excellent “upgraded”customer service and slowly but surely they have weeded out the majority of the issues that plagued some models of the M-200. I am seeing very good things written in many of the outdoor forums about the M-200 nv and M-200 4.1. All those negative issues are rarely mentioned. The white out problems have been pretty well taken care of by software upgrades and the elimination of the “flash on” option in the program. It seems that when this cam is placed in a spot where intermittent shade might cross the light sensor on the front of the cam, the cam will accept this as being a low light situation and cause the flash to go off. This might happen in the new firmware models on occasion but should not be an issue as it was before. Our three cam test proved that this camera can hold its own against more expensive cameras like the Cudde 3.0 when it comes to its sensing ability. It is running par with the WD series Stealth cams. We are in the process of re testing the M-200 nv (no version) and in the process of trying to acquire a 4.1 to test. We will be putting out the update on these within the next couple weeks.