Does anyone have an opinion about Phonak (Hear Again America) audiologists? I find that mine is not very helpful at all, and, in fact displays more interest in selling me things and $$$$$ than anything else. Virtually no help regarding programming and insisted it was not her field or responsibility. I paid her over $4200 for my Phonak Audeo Infinio 90 Spheres but she offered lifetime service if I paid her $6200 and did not use my health insurance. I refused her. The when one connecting wire broke, she replaced it under warranty but told me otherwise it would cost me $175. Despite warranty, she still charged me the $85 service call fee. I subsequently purchased the entire receiver assembly identical to the original on Amazon for $49.99. I will not go back to her for anything other than warranty and even then I will consider others.
That’s indeed bad. However, ‘Hear Again America’ seems to be a franchise operation, so they are not ‘Phonak Audiologists’. Maybe you want to change the title…
Having said that, what was included in the $4200 you paid? No service at all?
I’ve had worse experiences, and unfortunately this is not isolated to Phonak—it is more systemic. The quality of my hearing-aid care has depended far more on the individual provider and their willingness to program and follow up than on the brand being sold.
The traditional fitting model is often not conducive to careful programming: “Try this and come back in a week.” When I make my own adjustments, they are small and immediate, followed by testing and real-world listening over several hours. But change one setting and then wait a week? If my dentist worked that way, I’d be toothless by now.
In my own experience, the better the support, the more ridiculous the cost. Mostly, however, it was inadequate, unresponsive, and sometimes unprofessional support that pushed me to learn about programming and eventually do much of it myself. Had I known how easy I would find the software to use, I might never have paid thousands of dollars under the traditional bundled-service model—but that was ten years ago, and a great deal has changed.
My current neuro- and surgeon explicitly supports me doing my own programming and believes the system is increasingly moving toward greater patient control and programming. He is a physician rather than an audiologist, so I regard that as an independent professional perspective.
$85 seems steep. Did you get the receiver swapped at the desk, or did you book a 30-minute appointment? Cuz if you decline purchasing for services and then booked services and have to pay a la carte. . . I don’t know what to tell you.
I paid her over $4200 for my Phonak Audeo Infinio 90 Spheres but she offered lifetime service if I paid her $6200 and did not use my health insurance.
Two key questions here:
Does she generally take your insurance, but the lifetime service package was only available if you paid cash?
Was the $6200 the full price for the hearing aids plus the service package, or just the upgrade price for lifetime service rather than standard warranty service? (Seems steep for that, but it’s important to be sure.)
If she officially accepts your insurance but offered you a discount or special deal for not using it, that’s almost certainly a violation of her contract with the insurer. The insurance company would be very interested in hearing about this - they really care about this stuff, because it costs them money when providers do it successfully. You could also report it to your state insurance commissioner and the state audiology licensing board, though I don’t know whether the latter would care. Whatever you do, I would definitely find a new audiologist.
Virtually no help regarding programming and insisted it was not her field or responsibility.
Whose responsibility did she think it was? I’m curious about the name of this specialty sub-field of audiology she thinks you should be referred to for programming.
This (in my book) is why unbundling doesn’t work well. The client paid for a set of products but opted out of the professional services contract. Aside from whether the receiver change was an actual warranty item or not, it sounds like the aids haven’t been optimised either.
Nobody goes away happy, despite the client having paid a lump of money, the Audiologist doing their (constrained) best at the outset etc.
My concern with the move to more flavours of product, that there will be more unmet expectations flying around and less built in capacity/time to deal with them.
Thank you this is very supportive information. I too, wish to do my own programming. I finally found a way and acquired the Target software for Phonak (though the Phonak sales franchise lady told me I could not get it). Unfortunately i work in an Apple ecosystem so I am now waiting for a used PC from my son. I am absolutely certain I can learn how to tweak my Phonak Audeo Infinio 90’s. Thank you for your words.
This (in my book) is why unbundling doesn’t work well. The client paid for a set of products but opted out of the professional services contract.
Of course, one downside of bundling is that the client is tied to one practitioner, which is a problem if they don’t provide good service, or if the client needs service out of the area due to travel or relocating.
As a practitioner, what would you think of an arrangement where the services part of the purchase price goes to the manufacturer, and they reimburse you when you provide service to a client? The client could go to any practitioner who’s signed up with that manufacturer. You could sign up with multiple manufacturers.
You’re very welcome—and I completely understand. The claim that patients simply “cannot get” Target is largely the official company line, not the practical reality. I have always wondered why someone who bought an expensive Phonak product should be denied access to the software needed to understand and adjust it.
My audiologist knew I had Target and did not object. Her very reasonable request was that I not make major or undocumented changes that would make her job harder if she later had to figure out what I had done and correct a problem. I thought that was fair. I saved the original fitting, kept notes, and made small, reversible changes rather than randomly moving everything at once.
I no longer use an audiologist for routine fitting adjustments because, in my experience, feedback has been more detailed and useful. It can draw upon a broad range of technical information and help translate my admittedly lay descriptions of what I hear into specific, testable fitting changes.
There is certainly a learning curve, but Target can be learned—especially if you proceed carefully and ask questions whenever something is unclear. Copying and pasting Target questions, screenshots, or descriptions of a hearing problem into an AI program can sometimes be more helpful than trying to explain a complicated hearing issue to an audiologist during a tightly scheduled appointment. AI gives you time to think through the problem, understand the terminology, and consider each change before making it.
Using a Windows PC is the main nuisance for those of us living in the Apple world. Once your son’s PC arrives, you should be in good shape. I bought a used Lenovo ThinkPad dedicated solely to Target.
The Infinio 90s are sophisticated hearing aids, and I have found that careful self-programming can be extremely useful because no one else can hear exactly what you are hearing in your everyday environment. In many situations, Target’s existing settings are already the best choice, so I leave well enough alone as much as possible.
Good luck, and please keep us posted on how it goes.
ChatGPT assisted with grammar and editing. The experiences and opinions are entirely my own.
As a practitioner, what would you think of an arrangement where the services part of the purchase price goes to the manufacturer, and they reimburse you when you provide service to a client?
So…a bit like universal healthcare but instead of pricing being set by the government, who cares about efficiency and return on investment for it’s populace, it’s run by the manufacturers who care about their shareholder’s profits? What could go wrong.
As a practitioner, what would you think of an arrangement where the services part of the purchase price goes to the manufacturer, and they reimburse you when you provide service to a client? The client could go to any practitioner who’s signed up with that manufacturer. You could sign up with multiple manufacturers.
So, privatise the profits and socialise the losses?
Do you work for a Right leaning government?
Seriously, the manufacturer oligopoly would never agree to it, plus I’m not sure I’d like the obligation of having ‘anyone’ waltzing into the premises and demanding that I service the aid they bought five years ago from the other side of the country. Onboarding people is an expensive and time consuming process, plus the issue of ‘it was working when I brought it in and now it doesn’t’……
Don’t get me wrong, if you need a wax-trap or dome changed we’ll do it for free over the counter or a new receiver, for the £60 fee. However if I open the hood and you didn’t buy it here, it costs you £200 a side (including a test). I don’t work under obligation for anyone else. In a chain store it’s different and if I was salaried I’d expect to do some work to preserve the store brand value.
Collective agreements are all well and good, but often unfortunately the people who do the heavy lifting aren’t the ones receiving the biggest rewards.
@Um_bongo I moved recently and there is a local (once a month) in town. They offer Free hearing test. I have Phonak Lumity 90s. After the Free hearing test they charge $400 for programming the aids. As hearing aid wearers, we just keep paying more and more , if we move and/ or change audiologists. I don’t know what the answer is, because the way hearing service is tied to the original Audi or His. What’s your thoughts?
You go to a new dentist (in a new town) and they onboard you/inspect your teeth, x-ray, give you a hygienist service etc. Do you expect the ‘service guarantee’ from your previous dentist to carry any weight?
I know it’s not exactly the same, and as the market has persuaded you that you bought ‘a product’ not a service, you feel that you’re entitled to an ongoing level of back-up. However the way our consumer law runs, is that you only have a contract with the company/location where you purchased the devices, fundamentally that drives the process.
Also, if not: how do I eat if I get a horde of ‘ex-other’ clients appear, demanding X level of service.
However the way our consumer law runs, is that you only have a contract with the company/location where you purchased the devices, fundamentally that drives the process.
I suspect a lot of people here would rather have a contract with the manufacturer.
Also, if not: how do I eat if I get a horde of ‘ex-other’ clients appear, demanding X level of service.
That would be between you and the manufacturer.
Clearly you and @Neville think you wouldn’t do well under such a system, and who am I to say you’re wrong. But this isn’t like single-payer or socialized medicine, because there are multiple competing manufacturers, and you’re free to choose whom to contract with, to sell their products and provide service.
I suspect a lot of people here would rather have a contract with the manufacturer.
The manufacturer doesn’t provide the service though. They’d like a fully commoditised market and sell ‘things’ straight to you via vertical integration. Unfortunately the people on here aren’t typical hearing aid users. They are an informed/educated subset of our typical clientele: probably a vanishingly small % who want to see under the hood/bonnet or even understand/interact with the fitting process.
Maybe practices vary in other countries, but I’ve never heard of a dentist - or any medical service provider - offering an all-inclusive prepaid package. And I’ve certainly never heard of one refusing to operate without one, as many audiologists do. The idea of a dentist refusing to fill a cavity unless I prepaid several thousand dollars for the promise that he’d fill any other additional cavities I might or might not have in the next 5 years sounds crazy to me, and would to any American. Is this a thing in Europe? I think the better question is “Why is this the norm for audiology?”
Now, I don’t think the manufacturer arranging it all is a workable system, either. I think when someone chooses an unbundled option, they need to suck it up and pay for whatever additional services or non-warranty fixes they can’t . A “free” hearing test, then $400 for programming based on the hearing test, sounds perfectly reasonable to me (assuming, of course, that the hearing test shows a change that would make updated programming beneficial).
But this isn’t like single-payer or socialized medicine, because there are multiple competing manufacturers, and you’re free to choose whom to contract with, to sell their products and provide service.
You mistake me. I would prefer to be under the socialized system in a perfect world where the socialized system was well managed and funded and paid for appropriate services. I don’t want the manufacturers to decide what services my patients need–that sounds more like what’s going on in America now where rather than doctors decide what their patients need, insurance providers decide.
As for bundling, I largely agree that it’s problematic in a lot of ways, one of them being the patient perception that they are buying a device and service is free.
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