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Oticon charging problems

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After two years of taking my hearing aids and charger(s) back to my audiologist and Oticon, I continue to have problems every day. Most days the left hearing aid emerges from overnight charging only half charged, so I start the day one-eared. In an hour or two the other one it up to 100% charge and I can get on with my day. My audiologist https://www.selectivehearing.com.au/25 dutifully sends the tech back to the local Oticon lab, who dutifully say they have conducted tests and repairs and “hear you go, try this” when I get them back. Most times (let’s say we’re up to six returns in 2 years) I am told “we never have this problem with other users.”. Hmmm. But on this forum I have read plenty of identical complaints about the same thing and still no action from the manufacturer. What can I do?

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If you want to go back to traditional batteries, you could try to get Oticon to do an exchange under the terms of the loss/damage provision. It wouldn’t be free, and you might forfeit the possibility of a future loss/damage claim, but maybe it’s worth it to you. I did a similar exchange with ReSound, not involving rechargeables.

Edited

Not saying it is your issue but after I had similar issues I found that if wipe my aids down with a cloth that I normally use for my glasses that i don’t have the charging issues.

I suggest you take a test. Try to put the left hearing aid in the right slot and the right one in the left slot. That’s how we’ll find out if it’s to the hearing aid or to the charger. … I have a hunch that it’s the charger, that it overheats after charging for a while and stops charging. It is possible that after that it is easier for him to charge only one hearing aid because it uses less power to charge

Edited
@DrJohnCokley said:

Most days the left hearing aid emerges from overnight charging only half charged, so I start the day one-eared.

But on this forum I have read plenty of identical complaints about the same thing and still no action from the manufacturer. What can I do?

I would say that I monitored this forum closely for issues with Oticon rechargeable batteries, and while yes, there have been complaints about Oticon batteries not lasting the whole day for people, or have reduced full-day capacity sooner than the expected 3 year warranty, that is different than your description of your issue here, which is that the charger doesn’t complete a full charge on your left aid by morning time (only half charge). Your issue description is very specific and is totally different than the usual failure to provide a full-day capacity in less than the 3 year warranty.

Actually, I don’t recall any complaint about Oticon battery charging issue that is identical to what you’re reporting → failure to completely charge overnight in one of the aids. If you do have specific links to forum threads/posts that complained about your EXACT same issue, please share with us so we can review them more closely.

I’m also puzzled why it would stop charging at 50%, then in another hour or two, it finished charging the remaining 50%. I presume that you must have removed the partially charged left aid out of the charger, to find out that it’s not fully charged yet, then put it back in for another hour or 2 for the charge to complete. Is that the correct assumption?

You said that you must have made Oticon resolve the issue for you about 6 times in 2 years. So does that mean that they resolved the issue for you but each time only lasts on the average of about 4 months before the issue returns again? So it worked for a good several months before it broke, then the pattern repeats itself? Or did you actually spend a lot of time living with your workaround before you turn it in for repair?

If it’s always the same left aid that exhibited the problem, did you at any time (after a few failures) insist on Oticon giving you a brand new left aid replacement to eliminate the issue that it’s specific to that lemon left aid? If you did switch to a completely new left aid replacement and the issue reoccurred, did you also insist on getting a completely new charger replacement in the case that it’s an issue with the charger?

I know that the Oticon charging instruction tells you to make sure to put the correct aid into the correct slot in the charger (right aid in the slot for the right aid, and left aid in the slot for the left aid), but did you ever try to swap them into the other slot to see what happens?

In reply to @Volusiano

Hi and thank you for a curious response. You seem to focus tightly on whether my issue is EXACTLY the same as others in the forum, and fuss about whether the issues are IDENTICAL. From my point of view the issues are the same because previous reports and mine all concern the design of the power circuits and the fact that Oticon is slow to hear what its customers say. With a little bit of knowledge about how design engineers work, and how they must approve and sign off the testing and subsequent manufacture of the units, my position is that this is a problem for the design engineers and I hope they hear about it and fix it.

It all depends on what your goal is with the thread. If your goal is to bash Oticon to let off some steam about your issue with their rechargeable battery system then by all means feel free to do so.

But because at the end you asked what you can do, so I thought you genuinely wanted to know how to get help debugging the issue to see if you can help yourself resolve it or not. So that’s why I asked probing questions to help out.

But apparently that’s not what you are interested in, you just want to get off your chest about Oticon’s failure to resolve your battery issues 6 times in 2 years. So what can you do now? I think you should dump Oticon for another brand’s aid because Oticon hasn’t been able to resolve your issue after many times like this.

Yes, I suppose I have reached the point of wanting to get this off my chest, but not just to bash Oticon. Actually, it has been my experience (and others, including Chris Anderson, author of “The Long Tail” and “Makers”) that publicly shaming companies attracts their attention and gets something done about the problem at hand. No offense to your good self, Volusiano, I can see now that you were trying to help. Possibly some misinterpretation in the cultural communication. Apologies.

I have the same (or very similar problem). I acquired my hearing aids (Oticon More 1 miniRITE R) on August 11, 2022 (a little less than two years ago). My left hearing aid still charges to 100% but even after charging overnight my right one charges only to 77% — and yet both hearing aids show green lights when placed in the charger, which I thought was the indication that they’d reached a full charge.

I haven’t tried charging the right hearing aid in the left-hand charging slot on my charger (model C-1A2). Is that safe to try in order to see if the problem is with the hearing aid or with the charger?

Thank you!

@RobertJ said:

Is that safe to try in order to see if the problem is with the hearing aid or with the charger?

Yes, you can try to change/swap the left with right hearing aid in the charger slot. The cable and receivers must show to the back of the charger, as shown on the pictures.

naida

naida 2

I had the same issue with my Oticon Charger 1.0 (C-1C2) charger, and found that the right charger slot stopped about 70% - 80%. Same issue occured after i switched left to right and vice versa .

Then i ordered an Oticon Travel charger and this is not happening with them , both aids charging 100% every charging circle.

So i assume the problem lies with the standard Oticon chargers.

Thank you, @firenzel! I also wrote to Oticon Canada, and here’s what they had to say:

Thank you for your email; you can definitely switch the aids in the charging slot and see if the issues follows the hearing aid. If you find it continues to show less on the right hearing aid I would recommend that you take your hearing aids into the clinic where you purchased them and have them assess the battery health. It might be time to replace the battery.

In the meantime to rule out any other possibilities, you can ensure that your phone’s operating system is up to date and that the Firmware on the Companion app is up to date as well.

You can always uninstall and reinstall the app and if you have an iPhone you could try doing a hard reboot, and if you have an Android phone you could try clearing the Bluetooth cache. Instructions for both these operations can be found with a Google search as it depends on your phone model how they are completed.

Charging the hearing aids in the “wrong” slot shows that both my hearing aids can charge to 100%, so the problem is clearly with the charging unit.

I have the same problem,just recently my left hearing aid wont charge. I haven’t brought them to oticon yet, but will do tomorrow. Can I request for a
left one? My hearing aids are less than 2 years old.

I have the Oticon companion charger with built-in battery, the charger seems fine because the good hearing aid charges the the other slot , when I put the bad in the the slot the orange light comes then starts blinking. ???

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