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108 of 114 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Scanner Except for Frequency Download, January 17, 2000
I recently purchased a Uniden BC 245XLT handheld scanner and am generally very pleased with it. It is well designed, well made, easy to program manually, and has good sound quality. My only complaint so far is my inablity to use its new, highly touted "Smartscanner" feature to download frequencies from the Uniden/Bearcat national frequency database via a PC or external modem. To access the database via a PC, it is necessary to go to Uniden's Website, download a small program (that is zipped but not self-unzipping), install the program and, while it's running, dial a 900 phone number that's preprogrammed into the scanner. Unfortunately, it took me many frustrating and unsuccessful attempts to connect with the 900-number database using both my PC and, separately, an external modem before I discovered that my phone company, GTE Communications Corporation, routinely and automatically blocks 900 numbers from being dialed and that there is no way of getting around the block. While the scanner's operating guide mentions the possibility of a 900 block on one's phone line, since I had never requested such a block from the phone company, it had never occurred to me that there would be one as a matter of GTE policy. Thus, before buying a BC 245XLT with the hope of using the Smartscanner feature, a person should check with his/her phone company to make sure that 900-number calls can be made. If 900-number blocking is fairly common among phone companies, I think Uniden should switch to a non-900 number for frequency downloading. Or, if they maintain their policy of charging for downloads, they should consider making them available over the Internet through the use of a credit card and a secure server.Would-be purchasers of the BC 245XLT should also be aware that Uniden's 800 Customer Service number, once one is able to get through, may be answered by someone who doesn't know much about the Smartscanner feature of the product. The first time I called and told the Customer Service representative that I was getting an "error" message on the scanner screen when I tried to dial the 900-number frequency database, I was told that that was because their server would not be operational for another couple of days. When I tried a couple of days later and still got an error message, another customer rep demanded to know, "Who told you that about our server?" but did give me some useful information about COM port settings in the software I had downloaded previously from the Uniden Website. On my next attempt and next error message on the scanner, a third and different customer rep told me that, after seeing the 1 900- prefix on my scanner screen, I would need to manually punch in the rest of the telephone number on the scanner keypad to be able to make the call. It was only when that didn't work that I called my phone company and discovered that there was a 900 block on my phone line. As a last resort, I called Uniden again and asked if there was any way, other than using the 900 number, to download frequencies. She told me she would have to ask her supervisor and, a couple of minutes later, gave me another 800 number to call. When I called that number, which I think was the Bearcat Radio Club, and told the person who answered about my Smartscanner problem, she replied, "I don't know nothing (sic) about that." As is often necessary these days, I then asked, "Is there someone there who does?" A fairly knowledgeable-sounding person then came on the line and suggested that some purchasable third party software might do the trick. I haven't tried this yet but, in these matters, hope springs eternal, I guess.
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by Henry Eisenson
by James Wesley Rawles
