Security deposit for at home hearing aid demo

Not house visits. Some providers allow patients to try the hearing aids out at home for approximately 2 weeks before purchasing them. They just require a security deposit to ensure the return of the demo hearing aids. I was interested in hearing the average security deposit from patients or providers.

OK then! On behalf of the buyer here, I’d always pay IN FULL for the aids taken on trial. I never worried about that cuz I knew I could bring them back, and in all the 35 yrs I’ve bought aids, I only had to exchange ONE pair, partial price which was applied to the replacement model.

My trials have ranged from 30 days (guffaw! what can you do with delays, work, appt’s in one month?) to 60 days to 90 days. I have been unbelievably lucky in that the follow-on visits were only charged at ONE clinic (and boy did that make me think twice about going in, but I was also working and had that schedule to juggle). I can not complain. In fact I CROW a positive note on behalf of all but 2 of my audis over the decades.

I definitely think the deposit + credit card/ID info exchanged at trial is an excellent way to go. Skin in the game for us buyers AND the audis working with us for the “perfect fit”.

I was given a 2 week trial of Resound Omnia aids and told that if I lost them I would be charged $550 AU for each lost aid (about 10% of new price). They didn’t require payment up front.

I was always allowed to trial 3 pair of “trial aids” for 4 weeks each. When I returned the trial aids the aud would just reprogram the same trial aids with a different companies software. I wasn’t asked to pay for these trial aids upfront. But it could have been structured into the account after I chose what company worked best for me. I’m in Australia.

I was able to do 4 pairs from 4 to 6 weeks each. The 5th I trialed I paid for(insurance did) and could return for full refund. So in total 5 aids from 4 manufactures and only had to pay first on one of them.