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Oticon Warranty

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Edited

For USA audiologist. If your patient walks into your clinic with a bad speaker wire and it’s under warranty do you have to mail the entire hearing aid to Oticon? or replace the receiver right at your shop and then go to Oticon to get your stocked equipment replaced?

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I’m not a hearing professional, but when my receiver went bad, my audi just swapped a good receiver in stock for me. No paperwork, no need to send in the whole hearing aid. But I don’t know what she would do if I weren’t her patient.

In my case, one of the new Opn1s failed in the first week of use. Audi stuffed it in a box and mailed it to Oticon. Then issued me a demo. One week later I picked up a new replacement aid. Only hassle was the travel to her office. I did ask her about speakers. She said they are under the same warranty and if one fails during the three-year period she will replace it immediately from her stock.

Edited

In my case the hearing aid failed and was shipped back. But she said she would replace receivers from her stock if necessary. I imagine that the speakers are high failure rate items of small value and Oticon considers them expendable for field disposal.
EDIT: One thing of interest: When I picked up the replacement aid, the audi accessed an Oticon database and printed an instrument history for the new serial number. The history has patient name, date of purchase, warranty history, service history, device type and serial number. I imagine any Oticon-authorized audi/fitter has access to this data by instrument S/N and theoretically could provide warranty service to walk-in customers. But I don’t know what the policy is. A question for the professionals here.

I am an Australian Aud (can’t see why it would be any different in U.S) but the Aud should have a stock of receivers at the clinic for failures - One of the big advantages of a compared to, say a is that receiver changes can be performed easily and quickly over the counter and the clinic sends the faulty receiver back to the manufacturer after you have left for it to be swapped for a new one to be put back to their stock. The only reasons I can think of why this would not occur is if there is another issue with the device itself / the Aud has run out of stock or you have a more unusual receiver type I.E a very long/short wire or if the brand you are wearing is not one the Aud stocks commonly. Either way, I’d be asking the Aud why the need to send the device back as it is really something which should be done in the clinic itself.

In reply to @aggie60

@aggie60 said:

theoretically could provide warranty service to walk-in customers

Depends on what service you mean. The warranty covers the device. You have likely also purchased a service package with your own provider, so services with a different provider would not be covered. It would not be unreasonable for them to charge a fee for their time.

Well, if the service is routine checks or reprogramming I consider I have already paid the provider I bought the aids from for that for the life of the aids. So I would not expect to go to another provider to get these services gratis. But for warranty support provided by Oticon, seems to me I could get that support from any Oticon-authorized provider and Oticon should reimburse the provider if there are costs.

It will come down to whether the provider is willing to cover the cost of the receivers themselves.

If the receiver has gone down within 2 years, you can send the lot back to the manufacturer and they will replace it FOC - And will service the rest of the aid too. Or if you’re 100% its the receiver at fault, to make it quicker for the customer, it’s sometimes easier to put a new receiver on it than incur the office time/postage and 2nd visit cost.

In fairness to Sonova, they tend to supply a pair of receivers per aid which covers this - other manufacturers are not so generous and the receivers can be far more costly to start with.

Edited

In reply to @alpine1

Here’s the receiver with the issue. I think it’s pretty clear there’s a problem Houston! Since I was stupid enough to do online business with this company (that from the get go the hair on the back of my neck stood on end!!!) I’ll have to suck it up and mail the entire back to have the receiver replaced.

20180410_213824

In reply to @aggie60

Interesting. The receiver itself is warrantied through the dispencing provider for 3yrs per my contract. If Oticon is not covering receivers through a warranty (per the oticon info provided by aggie60) and I’m being told by my provider that I must return the entire hearing aid so that he can send it to Oticon to get the warranty work completed, something doesn’t add up.

One thing is very clear, this hearing impaired patient will never buy another Oticon product!!!

In reply to @aggie60

Considering many people with hearing loss also have some visual limitations I find all the fine print in warranties to be quite offensive. It seems they make it way too hard to read before you get it home and blow it up to a readable size.

May I ask how did that damage happen? It doesn’t look like something that would just break in the middle like that in terms of normal wear and tear operation unless there was an accident of some sort?

The percision and sharpness of the teeth on that shark was incredible. I barley escaped with my life!!

Honestly, I think there must have been a defect in the casing combined with the fact that I had to constantly push the receiver back into the ear (so often so that often i just ignored and left the receiver part way in) created 100 fold the normal wear a receiver would normally have.

In reply to @alpine1

@alpine1 said:

Interesting. The receiver itself is warrantied through the dispencing provider for 3yrs per my contract. If Oticon is not covering receivers through a warranty (per the oticon info provided by aggie60) and I’m being told by my provider that I must return the entire hearing aid so that he can send it to Oticon to get the warranty work completed, something doesn’t add up.

It’s hard to say. The Oticon warranty arrangement with your provider may be different so you can’t really take somebody else’s warranty and assume that it applies to your provider.

Obviously the other poster’s provider doesn’t want to warranty more than what Oticon does to their customers so they passed along a more limited warranty to their patients.

Some providers (like mine and yours) are more inclusive and cover everything through their own written warranty. However they want to cover this maybe different. Some may swap on the spot if they have stock. Others may not have stock to swap and choose to return the whole thing to Oticon if Oticon requires so.

Or maybe because they’re an online outfit, they don’t have the luxury of having the customer bringing in the aid so they can do the replacement themselves, so they require the customer to send it to them for replacement because they don’t trust that the customer can replace without incurring damage to the connector.

I have replaced it myself and I can say that while it’s not too difficult, it’s also not as trivial as pulling out and popping in. It requires that you have the right tool to push into the tiny slot to unclip the receiver assembly out. And if you’re not careful in pushing it back in properly, there’s a potential to damage the connector in the hearing aid. It’s not something I would trust to let anybody try to do it themselves.

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