Moultrie - not a good experience

[Coach]

I just wanted to put this out here, I've got a lot of trail cams, Bushnell, DLC Coverts, Moultrie. I bought a Moultrie M80 a couple years back, and it was a really good camera. For some reason, it just stopped taking pictures - it would take video but no stills. It was out of warranty, but I sent it in anyway. I was told it couldn't be fixed, so the only option I had was to buy a refurb for $60 or just call it a loss. So I bought the refurb. When it arrived I put a fresh card in and new batteries. It would go into sleep mode and never wake up. It just went into a "trance" that could only be solved by pulling out the battery compartment and re-inserting it.

 

Sent that one back and they sent me another refurbished M80. I put in 8 fresh batteries and tried it out. It stayed on overnight, so I figured everything was ok and turned it off. A couple weeks later I wanted to put it out but the batteries were dead. I thought that was odd since it only ran one night on fresh batteries and had been turned off since.

 

Since this model can run off 8 or 4 batteries, I put in 4 fresh batteries and put it over our compost pile since I knew it would get some action. The display said I had 209 days of battery life.

 

By morning, there were zero pictures and the batteries were dead. I spent almost an hour on the phone with their Customer Service people, and while they were very polite, they insisted it was something I was doing wrong - the wrong brand of batteries, the wrong SD card (All I run are SanDisk - approved cards).

 

So, my $120 camera goes bad, they can't fix it but can replace it for $60 with a refurb that doesn't work. The replacement for the replacement doesn't work, and according to them it's because I'm not using the right batteries, or the card, although reformatted, may have been used in a different brand of camera.

 

Just wanted to put this out there - buy a DLC or Bushnell or anything else but Moultrie. They have really nice customer service folks, but at the end of the day their cameras don't work as well as others for the same money.

[gotcoues]

Dang Coach, where you been. I scratched moultrie off the list back 8+ years ago.......

 

Thanks for the review, I'll second that the coverts are solid, reliable cameras as a good alternative.

[AZLance]

Yep... Moultrie is bottom of the barrel!

[missedagain]

That has me frustrated just reading that, out of a half dozen different types of cams that I have my m-80 is my favorite one. I get 1 year battery life taking thousands of pics.

[capoeirajosh]

I have Bushnells so far. Have never had any issues with them. Glad I didn't buy the two moultires I was thinking about getting, instead of another Bushnell. Thanks for the heads up.

[wildwoody]

yup typical mouetrie i have had acouple and the same thing they both died at same time and were only a week old. they didn't even want to talk to me. put them in the trash where they belong. ez view work great and cheep

[bonecollector777]

I have an older Moultrie that runs off 6 D batteries and it's my most reliable camera. Kinda big but it has taken 10's of thousands of pics and I have switched batteries once.

[shanehamblin]

I had decent luck with the big older moultrie cams they just got old an used up, but the m80s are junk. Actually hung a cheap wal mart wildview on the same tree to see what was up with the m80. They just never worked right plain and simple. Bushnell makes the best camera in my opinion.