Uniden scanners are a 'nitch consumer product' and they are complex. Like ALL companies, their main goal is to make a profit. I have no idea how many scanners they sell a year. But I do know service techs aren't $15/hr cheap labor. Cadillac doesn't let you back into the service bay to talk to the tech/mechanic actually fixing your car. They have service advisors who do the scheduling, paperwork and talk to the techs. You don't "ship" your cadillac to a single service center. So you are comparing apples and oranges. Cadillac doesn't have a fixed fee to repair your car no matter what's wrong with it.All I wanted was a 45 second phone conversation with anyone at Uniden as to the cause of the failure to determine if I did something wrong to the radio to cause it to fail.
And in the name of excellent customer service, never use the term "cheaper". The proper term is "more cost effective". When I pay well over $700.00 for a radio with upgrades, I expect excellent customer service.
The SDS 200 is a "Cadillac" so to speak. When I take my broken Cadillac to the dealership, the customer service agent will always explain the issue and the proposed fix. “Mr. Diridoni, we were able to fix your car. We determined it was a defective logic board, and we went ahead and installed a brand-new logic board for you to expedite your repair”. So simple
What Cadillac the customer service agent will not do is simply throw me the keys and the invoice and say, "Here you go it's fixed" and walk away. That would be poor customer service, as in this case.
Did Uniden lose a customer? No, because the excellent product outweighs the marginal customer service. I have been in Telecommunications for 37 years and all of Uniden’s scanners are the best. The SDS 200 and 100 have the best digital audio and multi-site tracking that makes the other brands sound like crud and I highly recommend the SDS and BCD radios over any other brand.
Life isn't fair, live with it.