Insights From a Dummy Camera Manufacturer
Author: Carlton Purvis, Published on Sep 18, 2013
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Comments (43)
Brian Rhodes
No disrespect to Shoemaker, but a dummy camera vendor griping about his competition's poor quality is rich. Do fake Rolex vendors admonish each other when they 'are not fake enough'?
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Undisclosed Integrator #1
That was really good of Mr. Shoemaker to offer his insights.
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Marty Major
Someone should makes dummy cameras with real covert cameras in them to catch the more experienced criminals.
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Paresh Desai
I guess I should add blinking lights to real cameras? Or add dummy ones in the same room as real ones?
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Carlton Purvis
Here's an interesting story from yesterday about how a man's attempt to make a dummy camera look real backfired.
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Tom Bragg
With all due respect, averaging nearly a perfect 5 stars, means very little on those sites as these numbers can be fudged and falsified. I agree with a previous comment about this gentleman taking exception with cheap knock off’s. That is exactly what he later admits to with coping real cameras. I personally believe he is providing a disservice to our industry.
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Undisclosed
Crap. I guess we better turn off the flashing red LEDs on the faces of our Mobotix cameras!
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Tom Bragg
John, thanks for your comments as always a good discussion and opinions on a topic. I enjoy these almost as much as the articles themselves. I am not about to labor over the 5 star rating a business has and how they managed to get it. fair to say we disagree on this point. The comment on how long a business has been around who made without explanation. I simply mean that this can be a factor in determining if a person does buy from a business. NOT the only reason but a piece in the overall decision making process.
I actually enjoyed this read and do have people ask me about fake cameras. When considering a camera system people almost always ask for my thoughts on them.
Maybe I am just jealous that I did not think of this first!
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Marty Major
That camera has now moved to #2 - overtaking the Foscam PTZ which has dropped to 3rd.... :)
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Marty Major
The question that bothers me is: "Why is there so many reviews of this particular dummy camera?"
There's no other dummy camera even close. Is it that much better than the others?
For a dummy security camera, I'm sure this particular camera 'works' about as well as any of them.
And I wouldn't expect there to be a whole lot of 'middle' star ratings for any dummy camera - either it looks like a camera and hangs there, or it breaks and it don't. Not much nuance. 5 or 1. Based on this cameras % of 5s to 1s, we can assume it at least hangs there, looking at least marginally like a real camera.
So why does this particular dummy camera have exponentially more reviews than any other dummy camera Mr. Shoemaker sells (they show 41 different models listed on Amazon)- or any other dummy camera on Amazon for that matter?
I plotted all 500+ reviews of this camera by month and rating:
This cameras first review was in early Feb 2011.... it's been on Amazon for awhile. In it's first 7 months, it garnered a total of 21 reviews, and by the end of 2011 had risen to 43 reviews. By June 2012, they had added only 50 more reviews for a total of 93 reviews in it's first 18 months.
There was a very slight increase in reviews from July to October 2012 (from ~8/mo to ~10/mo), then in November 2012 the 'reviews per month' figure doubles to 20. December 2012 - 25 reviews, January 2013 - 35, February 2013 - 36..... it's around ~50/mo currently.
200 of the 500+ reviews for this camera have been generated in the last 5 months - after it having been available on Amazon for ~30 months.
There is much debate online about the trustworthiness of 'customer reviews'. Primarily because there are many ways for companies to try and 'game' this system. One of those ways (amongst others) is to simply identify buyers who 'like to review stuff' and ask them if they can send them their product if he/she would simply provide feedback via a review.
NOTE: The article I linked to does not mention the 'Amazon Verified Purchase' label showing that the review was from someone who actually purchased the item that's being reviewed on Amazon. However, and I'm not saying it 'was' done, but simply that it 'could' be done; A promise to refund the purchase price after review is submitted (whether the product is actually returned or not) would have a lower response rate, but it would still generate reviews. People who receive stuff for free will almost always give a positive review - if it aint complete junk.
=======Semi-Related========
The only study of Amazon reviewers that I could find was this one. They sent requests to all 1000 of Amazon's Top 1000 reviewers and got responses from 166 of them. It's a long report, but a good read.
Things of note from the responses/results they collected:
1. Solicitation of Free Products - 85% of our respondents report being sent free books or other products to review by publishers, authors and the like. This is an important finding because it shows that Amazon top reviewers do receive some sort of direct mail reward, however small, for their endeavors.
2. The median age group of the Top 1000 reviewers is 51-60.
3. 70% are male; 30% female
4. Top 4 Occupations: Writer (14.01%), Educator (12.74%), Retired (10.83%) and Attorney (7.64%)
So, educated old-timers are the top influencers in the primary buying realm of the youngsters (I love that irony). :)
======End of Semi-Related======
Back to the camera in question. If we profer the given that this camera is at least as good as the others of it's kind, and that it will most likely perform to the expectations of someone looking for a security camera that aint really a security camera, then simply generating lots of reviews can help push that particular product onto the 'best of' lists.... especially if there is no other similar product with near as many total reviews.
So, how can you tell if a review is authentic (person buys dummy camera, tells everyone what he/she liked/didn't like) vs the 'product tester/reviewer' (person receives camera to test in exchange for review)? You can't really. That's the beauty of it. :)
However, you can look at the buying patterns of those that reviewed this camera. Would someone who reviews 20+ disparate products - all on the same date - be an indicator of a 'tester/reviewer'? I don't really know that either. But here are ten people who rated this camera 5 stars (within the 'review explosion period') who all appear to review lots of differing/disparate products on the same date:
Also, none of the reviewers of this camera in it's first 19 months on Amazon exhibit these buying patterns.
One other thing. If you click on 'See All 500+ Reviews' and sort by 'Most Helpful' (the default), notice that it is stacked hard with 'Helpful' reviews from 2011. Also, note the very high 'likability quotient' of these early, 'helpful' reviews (i.e. large percentage of total 'read' reviews saying it was 'helpful'). No review during the recent 'review explosion period' has near as many total 'reads').
Based at least on the correlation of reviews to sales, even when the reviews were the most 'helpful', they didn't sell too many of this device. So the explosion of recent reviews don't appear to be helpful at all - at least to the people thinking of buying this camera that is...
Thats my 2 cents. I am no expert, nor am I insinuating anything of any kind by any party.
I'm just a numbers nerd who had some time on my hands last night... :)
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John Honovich
The world's first (and probably only ever) dummy camera shootout is on.
I just bought 8 dummy cameras for the grand total of $74.77, including shipping, from Amazon.
Derek, have at it. Let's mount them side by side and next to real cameras to see how realistic or not they look. Take a few videos, gather some recommendations and post on the site.
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Joshua Herron
For the same cost of these dummy cameras I have hundreds of real cameras that just don't work or don't work well any more. Maybe we should start a real camera gone bad aftermarket sales site? That will really throw the experienced criminals for a loop.
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Marty Major
hmmmm....
This same Amazon seller also has an ebay store.
Interestingly, of the 76 items they list on their ebay site (all also available on their Amazon site), guess which item isn't there?
You guessed it - no 'Outdoor Fake, Dummy Security Camera with Blinking Light (Silver)' - their huge seller on Amazon!
How does that make sense?
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Marty Major
Here's another mind-blower: Their #2/#3 best-selling camera on Amazon isn't even listed on this sellers own home page!
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Undisclosed
Having read the last few postings, I now feel like a dummy.
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