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

My husband started wearing Aids in the 1970’s due to family hearing problems. I have been wearing hearing aids for 10 years consistently and probably 6 years inconsistently because of poor fitting before that.

1. Lack of information about the Audiologist/Hearing Instrument Specialist to make choosing a provider less difficult
2. Poor communication about the differences in the products being offered - - Both from the manufacturers and from the Audiologist/Hearing Aid Specialist. If there is only one brand being sold, run - don’t walk out the door!
3. Short term of testing and inability to test multiple brands
4. Audiologists and HIS that do NOT tell clients about T-coils and/or do not set up the T-coil. I live in an Independent Living apartment and lived in an “over 55” community for 10 years before that. Many venues here are Looped. Our local community theater, the Library meeting rooms, most churches as well as the big meeting rooms in the communities. As you can imagine, very large numbers of residents wear hearing aids. Yet, few have a T-coil and many that do were never told about it or how to use it!!!
   ENOUGH from me.

$6300?! Go to Costco! In 2015, I paid $4000 for my first pair (NOT at Costco) and sadly lost one during Covid mask wearing. So when it was time to replace them I decided to give Costco a try. I was worried I was bargain shopping for something I really needed. BUT They were great! The best experience from initial hearing tests to selecting an fitting the hearing aides. AND They were only $1200! I was very pleased. I have the KS10. There have been issues with charging them, but I got a new charger and problem solved. I also have a set of Phonak aides that I got because I wanted a battery pair for nights when my grandkids stayed I needed to hear be able to hear. I do not like them as well. BUT again, Costco prices were far more reasonable.

So for me it is making choice. Do these sound good? Are they going to work outside in loud stores and crowded rooms as well as as they do in this quiet office? It is SO disturbing! Honestly I thought choosing eyeglasses was difficult. “Is this lens better or this one? Now try this one? Which is best?” The whole time I’m thinking you never changed them did you? And selecting the right lenses, purchasing eyeglasses and finding out later I was wrong is a much cheaper mistake than hearing aides! It really is ridiculous. And yes they say you have 30 days to return them, or however long each place’s policy is, BUT is it really easy to return them? Don’t they actually try to tweak them for you with ‘just try them like this for a few days’ and before you know it your return date has passed.

I also wish there were easier ways for us to modify the settings, while understanding what those changes mean, rather than having to go back to the quiet room to fix the problem we have in loud crowds. The entire experience is insane. I can say my next purchase is going to be scrutinized so much more than my previous ones have been. Hearing as well as possible should not be this difficult. I almost think that people fitting us for these things should have to also be hearing impaired so they at least understand how challenging it is.

Yeah I ended up at Costco after coming to this forum. Well pleased with my experience there and was much more comfortable with the pricing

No T-coils in my Phonak Audeo Paradise P90’s. The audi didn’t even mention them.

DaveL
Toronto

So sorry to hear that. WAY TOO COMMON!!

What a great question! I’ll focus on two:

1. Price! I’m peppered with emails from <hear.com1> that tell me they’ll provide me a 45 day trial of “the best hearing aids on the planet, because they’re DUAL PROCESSOR!” Turns out they’ll charge me a refundable $3,000, $5,000, or $7,000 for Rexton HAs after they send me a kit containing a tablet pre-loaded with their software and some padded headphones, which which I’d do a virtual “hearing test” with them online. Apparently, similar HAs are available from Costco for < $2,000, with a 6 MONTH return window, so I declined the “offer.”

2. Concern about whether the HAs provided really match my needs. I need to tell a (long) story to explain this.

I spent my professional career as a busy nephrologist. Two of my patients were a nice woman and her 20-something yo son. They both carried the X-linked gene for Alport Syndrome (which for the non-geneticist readers here causes deafness and kidney failure). Women, with two X chromosomes, are typically dramatically less affected by this disorder than are their male children (each of whom has a 50% likelihood of “receiving” the X chromosome carrying the variant gene from their mom). Of course, if a woman is unlucky enough to have received TWO copies of the Alport gene, one from her mom and one from her father, it’s likely the mom would never have had children, because the disorder would have been apparent so soon in life that she’d be infertile because of her kidney failure.

In any event, in the family under discussion, the son needed to start dialysis in his early 20s. His mom developed kidney failure and impaired hearing only much later in life.

When the son began dialysis, typically I would see him while “making rounds” in the dialysis center where he received treatments on the standard 3 times per week schedule. He was an EXCELLENT lip reader, and when I’d see him I’d stand in front of him while he was sitting or reclining in his dialysis chair, and we’d have a pleasant conversation.

Being young and otherwise healthy, he was an excellent candidate for a kidney transplant, but of course his mom could not be a donor, nor could any female 1st degree relatives (an issue likely to be resolved by whole genome DNA analysis if that’s not already the case—I’m old and well into retirement, so don’t know the state of research on that particular).

He received his transplant in the midst of the real estate boondoggle “great recession.” One of the few “good” things to come from that era was the replacement of illegible written physicians’ progress notes by the “EHR” (electronic health record), thanks to President Obama’s promotion of that technology by getting congress to budget more than $20 Billion to its development and adoption. However, the earliest iterations of that technology were far from perfect, and it was only because the enabling legislation was not just dollars in medical care providers’ pockets for purchasing the technology, but REQUIREMENTS that it be purchased in order to continue functioning as a Medicare approved provider that ensured its evolution into truly useful technology (the curious are invited to read UCSF Department of Medicine chair Bob Wachter’s book The Digital Doctor.

My 20-something patient was a techie who worked for the most prominent pacemaker manufacturer in the world.

In any event, his transplant came relatively soon AFTER my practice purchased an early iteration of the 900 pound gorilla of the EHR, “Epic.” The first time I saw him in my office following surgery, it was an “epic” disaster. I sat, struggling with the software, behind two giant flatscreen monitors; neither of us could see the other, and he couldn’t understand ANYTHING I’d say. Of course we realized what the problem was, but the solution wasn’t immediately apparent, beyond my emerging from behind my workstation to ask my questions, scribbling notes in an office that was supposed to have graduated from “paper,” then making my next patient wait while I entered my scribbled notes into the EHR.

At least a PART of this dilemma stemmed from the fact that I ALSO had some early hearing loss. I’d never seen an ENT nor an audiologist for this problem, partly because my prior experience with HAs had been with my father-in-law, whose devices screeched at others in the same room, inaudibly to him but distressing everyone who COULD hear!

Then, one day my patient came in for a routine follow-up appointment. More accustomed than ever by that time to crouching behind my monitors to conduct my interview, it took me a few minutes to realize that when I asked questions, HE ANSWERED THEM, even though he couldn’t see me. In fact, we both realized it pretty much at the same time and lept towards each other, me to find out what had happened, and he to show me his new tech (BT-enabled ReSOUND HAs, through which he could not only receive speech he could understand, but also through which he could sample his phone playlist, make phone calls with the phone in his pocket, and watch TV at home without bothering his hearing family members!

By that time my partners were tiring of my so-frequently uttered “could you say that again, please” that I made an appointment with an audiologist, who told me she was quite certain she could help me. I was probably TOO emphatic that I needed those miraculous little devices from ReSOUND, so she ordered a pair for me, albeit a bit reluctantly. I found their software problematic (at least for me) and the fidelity of their sound amplification distressingly “off” (far too “metallic.”).

At my first followup visit, she substituted the Phonak devices she’d planned for me to trial, and I’m now on my third generation of devices from their manufacturer, Sonova. However, Costco and Sonova have divorced, so no KS-10 replacements on the horizon for me. That leaves the question, “just what IS the best way for the hearing-impaired to find the best help?” Is it the case, for example, that a particularly skilled audiologist can infer from testing just WHICH manufacturer’s product, and which model, and which program settings are best for an individual patient, or does that come only from listening to one’s spouse’s oft repeated complaint “you know, you REALLY need new hearing aids.”

Let me be a clearer than my original comments were.

I initially rejected an audi’s direction to buy a pair of HAs for $6k. Several years later, I bought a pair of Kirkland Siemens that cost either $170 or $340 for a post-warranty ‘rebuild’, which gave me significantly upgraded innards. I imagine the ‘cost’ of the aids was above the rebuild cost but provided a giant markup at the $2500 I spent at Costco and a gargantuan markup at $6,000.

I believe that at some price point much lower than $6,000, the audi whose advice I ignored would have sold enough people to increase his income from the sale of aids and the sale of his expertise - i.e more sales at a lower price would have benefited him and the people who consulted him but didn’t buy.

I expect that price point would be more than Costco but still a lot less $6k, I’d have never looked at Costco, and I might have gotten the aids I needed a lot earlier. I imagine $3k - $3.5k would have hooked me.

@carolagate No Costco near me, nearest is 100 miles away

Finding a good audiologist is similar to finding a good doctor: recommendations and random chance although I do believe the odds of finding a good audiologist are lower than finding a good physician. Although there are certain qualities that certain hearing aids are better at, the main skill is listening to the patient and being good at adjusting hearing aids. Sound quality stuff like “too metallic” can usually be taken care of by adjusting the hearing aid. Of course others will argue differently that only their brand of hearing aid suits them

@Deaf_piper

I believe you have listed fatal flaws in this industry.

It seems to me that the manufacturer’s view the supplier as their client They market to them, rather than educating us as users.

@Deaf_piper said:

The price of aids is far too expensive for the working class person, and families. They just don’t have a spare $6000 or more to spend on aids nor do half of the retirees.

Actually, if you go to a particular audiology chain in Australia and ask them the price of a set of premium hearing aids the answer is $10,000. And that’s the price whether Oticon, Phonak or Resound. I asked the same question at Audika some time ago and the answer was the same (for Oticon Mores). They were, however, discounting the price by $2000- for that month only. It’s like it’s not real money.

The biggest barrier or “pain point” to hearing aids is the clinicians. Here in Ohio, I can get Oticon Exceed 1UP’s or Phonak P90’s for $5k. Yes I feel thats pretty ridiculous, however its a price I’ll gladly pay to be able to socialize. However I have yet to meet an audi that knows how to use the hearing aids. In fact, they will get on the phone with manufacturers and ask them how to control them. But since my thoughts are removed from those conversations and communicated by the audi, the results are useless. Furthermore, looking at the options myself in the programming software, you need an accurate audiogram, them they have 6 sometimes more formulas to choose from, then need to decide if you need linear, semilinear, or prescribed settings, then some hearing aids have 20 band eq’s with 3 different gains and mpo’s to get right if the prescribed settings dont cut it. Then on top of that, theres all the other settings they have to get right. I mean theres no way any audi is going to get those numbers somewhat right in just a few fittings. Mathematically the odds are stacked against them. Its a joke. Furthermore, here in the united states, its predominately a private/cash business so theres really zero regulation on it, not that that means anything in the US, its almost better off because the audi’s at the local hospitals are even worse. I mean i could go on and on about how much of a sham the industry is, its a blatant joke and straight up robbery. It all starts with the manufacturers, followed by the clinicians, then the patients are ultimately stuck with inferior fittings and useless products. Almost like its by design. Furthermore these clinicians, I’ve never met one hard of hearing so they clearly have no idea what its like or actually have a clue whats going on. They only know what they learned in school which presumably means nothing anymore. Pain points, definitely the manufacturers and maybe even more so the clinicians. I always say, the only thing between me and hearing is the doctors, couldn’t be more true.

Where can i find one of those? Ive searched hi and low.