Why do most audiologist refuse to reprogram online purchases?

@Neville: I have tried, on several occasions, to address my issues with the audiologist, but he always sides with the receptionist. Calls are not recorded - it’s a small outfit - so it’s my word against hers.

I’m sorry about that.

@Neville: Well, it’s going to cost him a customer, but I don’t think he cares. He told me when he called me to give me hell for telling the receptionist (kindly and politely) that I expected a callback that day - 4 days after having left a message - “I expect to have only one interaction with a patient at an an appointment, not 3 or 4.” (… this referring to the questions I often have about what he’s done to my aids, since he doesn’t explain that very well during the appointment, and I often don’t know what is going on until after I have worn them for a few days. Then, I ask a question like “How come DSL v5, just reinstalled, doesn’t sound like it did back in February? Is something different this time?”).

So, he’s losing what he considers a “high maintenance” client, and won’t care. I have informed Veterans Affairs Canada that I’m shopping for a new audiologist, and they reassured me that is entirely my prerogative.

I think it may have to with them not wanting to deal with a problem child. Why take on a client that won’t make you money and already has a history of being unsatisfied? There really isn’t any positive for the audi.

@mr.smithster: Sorry - I just was not connecting any dots.

No prob, I did kinda jump in the middle

My new audiologist expects and wants 3-4 contacts per appointment. Why? Because that’s usually the number of iterations it takes to get it right, because it’s difficult to pin down in words exactly what isn’t working, so it boils down to trial and error.

We’ll see what it’s like when the rubber meets the road.

I know this is an old post but I wanted to comment on this.

If we go back in time, the audiologists had a monopoly on the whole process and they charged the price they wanted, and we paid this price because we had no choice. I believe that I am not the only one to think that these prices are exaggerated. That’s why it’s becoming popular to buy and program ourselves. My audiologist charged me 600$ cad to program the first pair that I bought on the internet, for my second pair I invested this money in a noalink and I changed computers. At that time the Geni 2 was available directly from Oticon, why now we can’t find it, the audiologists have complained, he is losing money and that’s why he doesn’t want to program these aids, they want to discourage this practice, but they too at some point will have to adapt to this new reality as many other businesses have done

Yeah that’s it. Blame the audiologist. And that’s exactly why they hesitate to do this

You buy something on ebay or on line that maybe is not what you really need and then get mad a professionals that don’t want to mess with it??? Some will try programming them for you but I can’t blame the ones who don’t.

Bearing in mind that I have all of the correct kit and correct updates and have been doing this for long enough to know the procedural quirks of different manufacturers; not many.

However there’s a slight difference in doing that with a shelf full of replacement aids, credit accounts with all the main manufacturers, a good relationship with an independent repairer and a calibrated outcome measurement system to verify the actual result of what I’ve done.

That’s a bit different than buying a programmer, fritzing your only set of aids, then expecting somebody else to put it right. That’s specifically not covered by either your warranty or the supply agreement. Just like if you buy a new Mercedes and plug in to your own OBD reader, mess around with the settings and take it back to the dealer, they’ll say it was done at your own risk. They might reset it to be polite, but if you cause a mechanical failure or another issue, that’s on you.

If hearing aids are medical equipment
Wouldn’t you expect they would set them up? After all that’s the most important part.

DL

I had asked how many times that had happened.
So I am hoping to read a number in the response.
How many times did a HA brick in all the times THAT the practitioner handled HAs?

As far as I can imagine - the fear of bricked HA’s could be a very powerful deterrent to DIYers. So I can understand it being brought up to instill FEAR! But as someone who also works on cars and uses an OBD2 scanner, and have built dozens of computer boxes, and been using computers since the earliest ones were available… I can understand an item can brick for the following reasons:

Failure of an internal component.
Power Interruption during Firmware upgrade.
Static charge while handling.
Voltage spike.
Power interruption possibly during data transfer - but this is just a guess.
Could wireless programmer failure or interruption cause bricking?
If so I would love to know from an expert on that, exactly how it could happen. Failure would have to occur by Firmware being interrupted from COPYING to the chip. I imagine that to avoid BT signal interruption failure, which otherwise would be frequent, that the data is first copied to buffer, or temporary memory and then the firmware is overwritten only when all the data is already in the HA.

IT would be a good educational exercise one could do with an older, obsolete HA, to repeatedly try to update Firmware, while interrupting the BT, and to see if it is fatal?

If the HAs have a fresh or full charged battery, it will not have power loss. Static charge can be crippling. But a benefit of WIRELESS connection is that there are no wires to transmit the charge and the units must be well shielded… otherwise they wouldn’t last a minute on those with large beautiful manes!

So in reviewing the list I made of what could cause bricking - during DIY fitting, I am not finding any major cause greater than spontaneous failure one could experience at any time.

There must be some statistic on bricked HAs.
Anyone?

I don’t have statsics of bricked devices in the industry But :
I have been DIY’ing my Hearing aids for over 20 years. I started with America Hears BTE aids ( Lucid HAs ). In all that time I have bricked one pair of America Hears ITE aids about 12 years ago while doing a firmware update … which I found out later was the wrong update put out by the company. Since the were older aid at the time and no longer under warrenty and they wanted $400 each to repair them I chose not to have them repaired. Usually the update software check if the update is the correct one for the target device (I hope Lucid has changed its update software to check this before doing an update with the wrong firmware). Since then I have done firmware updates on many Phonak and Resound aids and many phonak Selects and ONs with no problems.