...Even on a tiny level Uniden foils any creative scannerista's attempt to foil Uniden's plot to force the Uniden owner to buy yet another expensive battery pack.!
I'm not sure it was a plot. More along the lines of assuring that the end-user wasn't going to stick in some bad combination of mismatched AA's in either capacity, age, or abuse.
Fortunately, Uniden no longer uses "packs" for recent models. Your 3300XLT isn't really that recent. They are to be commended for their use of pack-less AA's in their more recent models. This allows the user to pick what's best for them - however they do take the risk of getting calls about "my scanner won't scan", only to find out that the end-user is powering it up from an old 800ma abused AA from the desk drawer, and two dead alkalines from a remote control.
Oddly enough, for those that use rechargeables like I do, it is best to actually treat the cells you use as a "pack", - dedicate them for the scanner use, and not randomly use the cells in other devices and put them back into the scanner. Kind of back to square one, only we don't have a small connector to worry about.
If it really drives you nuts, just pick up a 396XT and you'll have no worries about proprietary batteries, connectors or packs.