What are the biggest pain points when "shopping" for hearing aids?

You are an honest person.
Wish I saw more of this honesty.
We all would be better off if we spoke up!
Lets challenge BS at every opportunity.

I recently posted how all users should call the MFGs demanding that any claiming to eventually be Auracast compatible -MAKE IT SO. Did anyone call? Bet not.
But some actually criticized me for expecting auracast so soon.
Yet I see a thriving thread on Auracast now.

The topic is a market research type of poll question.
Responses, I imagine are greatly dependent on buyer experience.
Not just HA buyer experience.
But a person who is not used to buying and digging into the research on technical type things, is unlikely to have the same concerns that tech savvy buyers might.

I have not (yet) perused most of the earlier responses on this old thread… Figured I would chime in first… before being influenced by others.

MY pain points are:
How to know what to believe from each source.
How much confidence to have in this person speaking to me?
What are their motivating factors?
How knowledgeable are they?
Are they biased due to limited stock and supplies?
Are they sales persons first, or healers first?

Will they care after the sale to help me?
What happens if I am not happy with them / with the hardware/ with the service?
What tech level is the item, and what better options will there be in the next three years?

Certain to have more to add to this reply

Having worn hearing aids for most of my life, I can say that the biggest problem with buying hearing aids is the luck of the draw problem in choosing an audiologist. Most seem to be able to fit and do basic programming for your ears and establish shall we say a minimum base level. However, very few seem capable of being able to configure hearing aids optimally for a specific hearing loss.

I am also surprised that so many audiologist don’t do speech tests (after fitting the hearing aid) and many also don’t do REM (which in my case made a huge difference). I would have thought it was common sense to test the hearing with the hearing aids in to see how effective the aids are, but it seems to be very basic tone tests and that’s it.

Last, I get the feeling with most audiologists that they seem to expect to fit a hearing aid and have one or two appointments for adjustments and that’s it - you should be set. I know any number of people over 80 with hearing difficulties who don’t wear their hearing aids because it’s too loud or worse they can’t hear any difference with them on etc! Basically for people who are hard of hearing due to age, rather than deaf due to an issue such as in my case my mother having scarlet fever when she was pregnant with me.

While I think hearing aid companies do invest a lot in research and development and it does make a difference, the problem seems to be lack of audiologist who genuinely want your hearing to be optimal rather than just selling hearing aids. Too many companies sell hearing aids, not sell hearing!

I am due to go in shortly for new hearing aids as my current ones are not working reliably anymore. I plan to go with a local family owned business this time and see if I get better luck with them.

@Roberto said:

Last, I get the feeling with most audiologists that they seem to expect to fit a hearing aid and have one or two appointments for adjustments and that’s it - you should be set.

Last, I get the feeling with most audiologists that they seem to expect to fit a hearing aid and have one or two appointments for adjustments and that’s it - you should be set.

Two ways to sell hearing aids

• First fit=volume
• Good setup=integrity and skill

You’re right. The audi/practitioner is key. Thank heaven we have such wonderful pros here that contribute so much.

Our hearing aids are medical equipment.

EDIT they should work when the care giver is “done”

I find the biggest pain point when shopping OTC is finding actual information about what the hearing aids are capable of, in terms of fitting. The vast majority seem to want to offer a black box of fitting options, with zero transparency about what they can do. Especially as someone with a less common type of loss, finding an OTC option that will even have the choice of working for reverse slope loss is maddening. Very few even have enough data available online to show they won’t be able to be fit for reverse slope loss, let alone finding a pair that can.

Maybe some of the more expensive OTC choices are better about this, but especially lower budget options, its awful.

Sound sample clips have been available for 3 decades or more.

You can run them when doing REM, or just during tuning to assess performance over background noise.

@Um_bongo

Thank you! Excellent. I’ll ask my ha specialist.

I looked at the Phonak Pro discussion for the myPhonak app.

iirc it said the primary advantage using the APP was being able to do setup changes remotely. I’d love to be able to schedule tests and changes in the environment where I have trouble hearing