New hearing aids, expectations

What you describe sounds pretty normal. Perhaps see if you can negotiate a longer return period?
Costco is a decent idea if available.

Have you been able to try NHS aids? You still have 6 weeks, I have taken aids back to Specsavers on the the final week of trial and been refunded without a problem. As others have indicated, if you can get to a Costco, for around £200 extra you can get a premium pair of aids.

How were your aids fitted did they carry out a REM fitting by placing probes in your ears with the aids, and then playing voices through a speaker which sound like a foreign language?

Thankyou, yes I did have an NHS aid for one ear 10 years ago. The test was much more detailed I can recall. The wait NHS wait period is a problem and they didn’t have a good rep’ but that may have changed. The Specsavers test took less than 10 minutes and the results were much the same for both ears which did surprise me as I favour one ear for the telephone.
I have concerns if the test is accurate or detailed enough and that I might get used to the aids better with time. Thankyou for the reasurance on the trial. I will check Costco in the meantime. Best wishes

@Trevor_W said:

The issue is that on all but the lowest settings, my voice sounds lispy, my words appear to carry a tail is how I describe it.

The first thing that came to mind on this is frequency lowering, a programming thing for most aids. It usually only affects S’s, not the ends of sentences. It could affect everything as well, pending on how it’s set up.

Which hearing aids are you using?

Our Costco is about an hour drive one way. This has proven to be worth the drive.

You paid for the test. Specsavers might give you a copy. If your luck is decent, the 90 minute round trip to Costco is likely to be worth your while. Of course, you need to be a member to get a hearing test there. That costs the equivalent of about 50 pounds in the US. Good luck!

https://www.specsavers.co.uk/hearing/hearing-aids/nhs-hearing-aids3

Have you tied this postcode checker>

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@Trevor_W said:

On the Rexton App I understan the volume pushes both low / high frequences and the balance just affects the high frequencies when increased

Frequency lowering can not be adjusted or turned on or off with the Rexton phone app. It’s only accessible from the fitters hearing aid software.

at first a couple of hours but then I started to adjust down to an acceptable level almost straightaway

Give it a few days of consistent wear at regular volume and then see whether you still need to turn it down as much. This might give you a bit more insight into whether your brain does start to readjust. If no, then take them back and indicate that you tried but have been unable to keep wearing them and you need something done to make them wearable.

that’s fair advice, thankyou I’ll try that

I was thinking of this post yesterday. I had a patient come in who has been in his hearing aids for about four years now. When he first got them, he couldn’t tolerate the high frequency gain (too hissy, echoy, lispy) and despite considerable counselling on adaptation had me crank them way down until he was comfortable. The result was that his speech intelligibility index, a measure of audible speech, was about 40% instead of his hearing loss allowing about 65%. He’s been pretty good about coming back for regular check ups though, and every year he reports that he wishes the hearing aids did a little better and every year I inch him up a bit and he says “oh that’s more clear!” (except for the years when I shoot past the mark and he returns a week later to insists they are turned down). I inched him up again yesterday and we’ve made it to about 58% speech intelligibility. We’ve also successfully moved from open domes, to closed domes, to power domes as of yesterday. Next up, custom tips.

All that to say, how long it takes someone to adapt and what they can tolerate is super individual. And sometimes what will and won’t adapt can be a bit of a mystery. This guy is very demanding and fights my recommendations and I think it has probably slowed things down a bit for him, but I’m still going to get him there eventually as long as he keeps coming back.

BUT, if your hearing aids are intolerable and when they are tolerable they do not benefit you I would still not keep them. They should at least benefit you, even if they are turned down. You can absolutely get a perception of a drawn-out /s/-y sound if things are a peaky and over target in the highs. I’ll often see issues there around 3000 Hz. But if the provider doesn’t do REM then it would be harder to precisely identify the problem and take out the minimum necessary to reduce that perception while maintaining audibility rather than make more gross adjustments. If they can’t make it work for you, don’t assume that another provider can’t.