Why I returned my Costco Rexton CIC hearing aids

I’m sure you can find better articles. It was the first relevant one I found. I see it as a general guide and if I were in the market, I would do much more research. But if the article is correct, BTEs are less expensive and can correct hearing more easily so I made the right choice for my needs.

I see the article as a general guide. If what it says is accurate, I made the right choice in selecting BTEs. I live near Palm Springs and would never use the Audi authors. I’m very happy with the advice and service I get at my La Quinta Costco. I tried but failed to used the edit mode to avoid multiple repetitive posts.

@user305 said:

“Word Recognition Testing (WRS) revealed a score of 84% at 80dBHL in the left ear, and a score of 84% at 80dBHL in the right ear… Not sure what you mean by “speech intelligibility” at about 34%.

I think @Neville is talking about how much speech you understand in everyday life. WRS is about how much you’d understand if everyone shouted right into your ear.

That’s good news. That’s good clarity when things are audible for you. But that’s when the words are presented at 80 dB HL. Average speech is about 45 dB HL.

Moderate SNR loss would make me expect that even with hearing aids you would struggle in background noise, and in some ways it would probably feel even worse because you’re not used to hearing all that noise. It’s possible that you would have gains there over time with consistent wear, but yeah I’d expect that to be a struggle.

Neville, very insightful. I think the audiologist did not really explain the test very well to me. His comment on the 84% at 80dBHL was “I thought you would be in the 60% percent range”. And left it at that. My report also has this comment: “Speech Recognition Thresholds (SRTs) of 40 dB HL and 35 dB
HL were obtained in the left and right ears respectively.” This was not explained to me. And the report ends with this: “QuickSIN Speech-In-Noise testing was conducted today and indicated that the patient experiences moderate difficulty hearing in background noise in the left ear and moderate difficulty hearing in background noise in the right ear.” I remember a comment that everyone has a hard time with this test.

On the BTE ones I tried for a period of time, the other problem was I need reading glasses and during the day I put them on to read or whatever. The glasses rubbing up against the hearing aid and being amplified or trying to position them was painful. Sometimes I would knock them loose. My wife said to get some glasses with bifocals or progressives to wear all the time, but I never did. Switching to in the canal hearing aids solved the wind noise and glasses rubbing.

Is the 34% an Audibility Index score?

It’s a rough estimate of the speech intelligibility index. If you look up a count the dots audiogram you can sort of eyeball it.

User777, he/she is not using RIC or BTE hearing aids. He/she was trialing the CIC hearing aid.

It appears that the CIC type is more expensive then RIC or BTE hearing aids. It looks like they have to use some type of mold impression which probably adds to the cost.

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Seems most of your issues with the Rexton’s centered around taking them out during the day. I started with Rextons but returned them for Philips 9030’s and I only take them out when showering, sleeping and drying if I’ve sweat with them in… I even mountain bike with them in. You can turn them down if want more quiet or use a more aggressive noise reduction program which is what I do when mtn biking. But I can imagine taking them out all the time will really screw your brain up trying to adapt to the constant changes back and forth. I guess for you better not to have HA. And I could probalbly get by without mine saying huh more often, etc but now that I’ve had them almost a year I would never want to take them out for very long…life was just too muffled before. Sunglasses, mtn bike glasses and reading glasses are not that bad for me and I have the behind the ear versions with open domes. My Air Pod Pro just don’t compare and way too much occlusal effect…great for streaming but too uncomfortable.

Thank you. This is all new to me. My Philips 9040 BTEs are my first HAs. They work for me very well at Costco’s lowest price. This thread has helped confirm my choice. Given the lower cost, ease of programming and seemingly better overall performance for speech recognition, I think BTEs are likely HA best sellers. I’m not surprised CICs cost more as they are custom formed and probably sold in lower volumes. Costco probably still sells CICs for much less than others do.