To Bite The Hand That Feeds You, So To Speak

I have no dogs in this race & I don't know Paul but I do know monitors from way back in the day of vernier tuning & Lord knows many of what came down the radio hobby pike of the good, the bad & the ugly could never be attributed to any one person who actually had the final say on a product except maybe the CEO but a collective, yet I see Paul being excoriated as if he singlehandedly designed, researched, developed, promoted, marketed & personally sold you guys these mega scanners, I'm quite sure his silence can either be attributed to his bosses ordering this which he, as an employee must abide by lest he lose his job or more then likely even a caring person tires of being kicked when he is down, you know, loyalty & all that not withstanding (Don't kill the messenger), my best radio was the rock solid Sonar FR series scanners, my worst was the Tennelec MCP-1, you win some you lose some, it's the price of progress.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. - William Shakespeare at BrainyQuote

I'm not saying the above quote directly applies to Paul, but I think it's the closest thing that's being attributed to him by certain members here.

haleve said:

I have no dogs in this race & I don't know Paul but I do know monitors from way back in the day of vernier tuning & Lord knows many of what came down the radio hobby pike of the good, the bad & the ugly could never be attributed to any one person who actually had the final say on a product except maybe the CEO but a collective, yet I see Paul being excoriated as if he singlehandedly designed, researched, developed, promoted, marketed & personally sold you guys these mega scanners, I'm quite sure his silence can either be attributed to his bosses ordering this which he, as an employee must abide by lest he lose his job or more then likely even a caring person tires of being kicked when he is down, you know, loyalty & all that not withstanding (Don't kill the messenger), my best radio was the rock solid Sonar FR series scanners, my worst was the Tennelec MCP-1, you win some you lose some, it's the price of progress.

The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. - William Shakespeare at BrainyQuote

I'm not saying the above quote directly applies to Paul, but I think it's the closest thing that's being attributed to him by certain members here.

Click to expand...

Longest sentence ever!

I think the problem is that people have tried to speak to others at Uniden about the issues as a consumer, myself included, and its fallen on deaf ears. So when you put Paul out there as Uniden employee on a forum, he is going to catch the good and the bad. He just happens to be in a bad stretch for a year now thanks to the siren app, analyze and other issues with the x36 line. As public information officer for a public safety agency, when things are going great everyone praises me because I am the face of the agency even though I did nothing but speak about the great work of others. On the other side, when they are going bad, its my fault also. It comes with the job.

Delete post. Thank you.

MarkPalmer said:

There are proposed class-action lawsuits in regards to the features that were not delivered by Uniden on the BCD X36 line. So following lines of common sense and wisdom, representatives of the company have likely decided to back out of the public forum domain until things are settled.

-Mark-

Click to expand...

Well you are incorrect by the fact that numerous postings have been made since the two months have passed since the last posting in this thread. Thanks for bringing it back up.

All i gotta say is wow

radiojunkie

kycophpd said:

Well you are incorrect by the fact that numerous postings have been made since the two months have passed since the last posting in this thread. Thanks for bringing it back up.

Click to expand...

That is why I deleted my post when I realized my error. I do find it highly amusing people would go all ape-$#^& over a stupid siren app, but hey, if it was advertised.......

-Mark-

kycophpd said:

... when you put Paul out there as Uniden employee on a forum, he is going to catch the good and the bad.

Click to expand...

You hear much more of the bad than the good, in any job where you deal with the public. Most people do not leave praise, just complaints. As an example: I called one of those "How is my driving" numbers to give kudos to a truck driver, and the call taker did not know how to handle a positive call.

Sent via Tapatalk

Edited a typo.

The original poster may be pleased (or displeased) to know the inventor of digital radio scanning and the Tennelec MCP-1 passed away a couple of years ago.

Peter Pflasterer Obituary - Brown-Wynne Funeral Home | Raleigh NC

The MCP-1 design was actually sound, it just never got together well in product development. Mr. Pflasterer's patents moved on to Electra/Bearcat after Tennelec, and the MCP-1 was re-born in to many successful Bearcat branded digital scanners. It goes to show that out of that loss came a lot of wins. There always has to be a first, and it isn’t often where the first is the best- or in the case of the MCP-1, any good at all

-Mark-

RIP

I don't believe in excoriating the inventor, I will however excoriate the invention because a man can't produce a golden egg all the time but with good customer feedback he can reinvent the wheel. Thanks for advising me of his passing & I don't relish the pleasure in any man dying no matter what I think of his product.

haleve said:

I don't believe in excoriating the inventor, I will however excoriate the invention because a man can't produce a golden egg all the time but with good customer feedback he can reinvent the wheel. Thanks for advising me of his passing & I don't relish the pleasure in any man dying no matter what I think of his product.

Click to expand...

That makes me glad- Peter Pflasterer was probably the most influential engineer in the creation of programmable scanning radios as we know them today, but he was clearly in the wrong place for what he designed. Their scanner line was Tennelec's first and only endeavor in to the consumer market and the company was in financial dire straits when the MCP-1 was introduced. Tennelec folded only a few months after the MCP-1 was put on the market. The MCP-1 didn't have the financial backing from the company to get the proper product development the circuit design deserved.

Later on in history even Masco eventually gave up with Electra and had it not been for Uniden taking over, scanner radio design would have suffered a major setback. I think scanner radios in general have seen a lot more good come from the bad rather than the opposite. I have owned a few Uniden scanner models I felt were ho-hum, but for the most part they have been decent.

-Mark-

People & businesses with integrity will appreciate the laurels that they may deserve, but also not shy-away from criticism, especially when it is deserved.

Opitz has always been really good at posting PR crap, but suddenly disappearing when there's a legitimate question or thread that he doesn't like (instead, allowing a couple groupies to try to bully the person(s) that brought up a legitimate gripe.

Now it seems like some uniden apologists are trying to explain his AWOL by stating that it could be due to some mysterious class-action lawsuit. This cowardly behavior isn't anything new for Paul Opitz here on radioreference..

Uniden made several promises to us well over a year ago, we paid a good amount of $$ for a product based on those promises, and all this time later, it still hasn't delivered on the promises, and they're failing to treat us with respect by keeping us informed.

Companies with INTEGRITY would fire one or more people over this sort of thing, and at least keep us informed. Uniden has tried to feed us a lemon, and by not demonstrating any sort of accountability, they're treating us like dumb, worthless scanner geeks that are too stupid to do much about it.

Instead, they come out with a new version of the 996XT that has P25 Phase II & have the audacity to suggest that it's for price-conscious people that can't afford/don't need all the (vaporware) features of the BC-536/436! Uniden has balls to treat us that way, but opitz & uniden don't have the balls to be honest with us idiots who trusted their promises regarding the BC536.

opitz needs to be fired, and I'm looking forward to being an active participant in any class action lawsuit. Remember that video uniden did, praising ol'putz's great experience & involvement with the new 536 & Siren? I do! He went on & on about how great it was going to be, especially with the Siren feature to be released a short time later, etc.

MarkPalmer said:

I do find it highly amusing people would go all ape-$#^& over a stupid siren app, but hey, if it was advertised.......

Click to expand...

Yeah what is it with some people? Expecting to get what they paid for??? What were they thinking?

MarkPalmer said:

That is why I deleted my post when I realized my error. I do find it highly amusing people would go all ape-$#^& over a stupid siren app, but hey, if it was advertised.......



-Mark-

Click to expand...

Many people bought their 536HP solely for the wifi and siren app. False advertising by Uniden plain and simple.

Even worse is Uniden's support for 436HP owners. NOTHING promised over a year ago has been addressed or delivered to date and no clue if or when it will be delivered.

Now with many x36HP's developing clock problems, this will take time away from delivering promised features to address this nightmare.

How about Uniden does the right thing and offer refunds to those who request it?

You won't get any argument from me if certain features were definitely advertised and weren't included, or they failed to work. In my eyes, Uniden should offer refunds or product exchanges to those dissatisfied with the product if they made claims for it to do certain things and it can't, with the issues not resolved in a reasonable amount of time. Looking back at history, one of the final issues Electra had when they carried the Bearcat name were problems with the very expensive BC350 model that never got resolved and delivered the knock-out punch to Electra with their parent company Masco. Uniden might not be in that type of financial crunch, but there are lessons to be learned with poor customer service if a company desires to remain respectable and in business.

-Mark-

Unacceptable!

I think even Uniden would agree that they should never have proposed Wi-Fi connectivity for one of it's radio scanners at this point in time - It just wasn't necessary!

Uniden's competitors don't have anything on the horizon to compete with and the risks of going down this route were always potentially going to outweigh the benefits on such a relatively low volume, niche product.

All many people wanted in a 'mobile' scanner was a reasonably compact, hardware base remote head. An upgraded, more compact version of the RH96 if you like.

Those that wanted to stream from a base scanner could do so already with existing technology.
Those that wanted to remote control their base scanner could do so with existing technology and these functionalities could easily have been expanded on with little, to no risk.

All Uniden had to do was fine tune and maybe upgrade existing systems with USB programming capability and possibly ethernet connectivity for it's base/mobile scanner. Incremental steps - not trying to reinvent the wheel.

Now this train wreck is coming back to bite Uniden's a**e big time.

Development of it's 'flagship' product has stalled, aside from some dodgy, half-baked Siren app that has managed to please only a very small percentage of BCD536HP owners, while leaving the majority of 436HP owners and even many 536HP owners feeling disenchanted, frustrated and angry at the company.

Now we see new, more mature versions of other Uniden digital scanner models being released - Three in fact since the x36HP was released.

What the hell is going on at Uniden?

Why have they got time to develop, produce and release three new digital scanner models over the last 12-14 months, yet not one substantive firmware update for the 436HP owners?

This is unnacceptable Uniden!

And don't bother trying to defend their position with 'dongle' or 'third party supplier' excuses Voyager & Jay! - Some things are indefensible..

Boatanchor said:

Why have they got time to develop, produce and release three new digital scanner models over the last 12-14 months, yet not one substantive firmware update for the 436HP owners?

And don't bother trying to defend their position with 'dongle' or 'third party supplier' excuses Voyager & Jay! - Some things are indefensible..

Click to expand...

Funny. You ask why things are a certain way, then post the answer. That means you know the answer but simply refuse to accept the facts. The events have been posted by Uniden on RR - WHY do some people insist that there were other factors involved?

FACT: The x36 project was delayed by the dongle firmware delay. This is documented on RR.

FACT: The other projects didn't suffer the same delay because they don't use the same dongle and/or the same firmware code that the x36 line uses.

FACT: It took Uniden less then 3 months to get a working (albeit in need of refinement) SIREN app out - the same timeframe as they predicted on release of the x36 line plus only a couple of weeks.

FACT: LOOK at the "three models" they released - they were all relatively minor updates of existing units. They didn't sink much R&D into them because for the most part the design was tested and proven. They were very likely pushed up on the schedule while Uniden was waiting for the dongle firmware. Or did you expect them to just sit around doing nothing while they waited for it?

Now that the benefits are showing up with the WiFi features, you argue that they should have never come out with them. REALLY? You whine about them being delayed, and now when you can't complain about that, you complain that they WERE added? Just goes to show that some people complain only to complain.

Your response times are improving I see

If so, only because I've been working more on the computer and less in the field recently for a number of reasons. Speaking of time, it's been a while since I heard from my stalker.

Voyager has developed an app that immediately alerts him every time an anti-Uniden post is made on RR.

dconti said:

Voyager has developed an app that immediately alerts him every time an anti-Uniden post is made on RR.

Click to expand...

This would make complete sense as he always has a reply!!

Too bad Uniden didn't build the app because we would have had at least a year before he started defending every move or non move they make.