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Jabra EP20's frustration with reliablity

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I’ve had my EP20’s for something like 14 months and today will mark the 3rd time I’ve had to send mine in for repair because the microphone on one is dying. First time it was the right, second time it was the left, this time it is my right. First two times it took me a week or so of thinking I was going deaf before I realized they were dying.

I’m beyond frustrated, kicking myself for not cutting and running during the return period, I know that’s on me. I suspect maybe it’s sweat that is killing them, I do a hard workout most mornings and sweat like a pig. The obvious answer is to stop wearing them when I work out, but it aggrivates me because this was a motivating factor in buying these in the first place, my last pair were disposable battery and would short out 1/2 way through a workout. These are supposed to be ip86, so a little / moderate sweat shouldn’t kill them.

I guess I’ll just keep on playing this game of sending them in, using them for 5-6 months then sending them back in until I get to 3 years. Maybe I’ll just suck it up and buy a new pair. I do have my eye on the Starkey Edge . They look to be the best on the market with AI w/ good battery life.

I really don’t have anything bad to say about Costco. The fitters I have dealt with are awesome, you can’t beat their hours compared to an Independant hearing aid store, chain or . Swinging by the department to get a new receiver, , domes is so much easier than booking an appointment. Also the fact that I was able to call them first thing this morning, get an appointment for today to get in a pair of loaners is great.

Just frustrating at this point. I want to like these. I dialed these in on my own w/ smartfit and can actually hear pretty damn well in noise, way better than I could than with my phonak marvels.

16 people in this conversation18 min readJump to latest

I have been wearing the Jabra E/H Pro 20s for about two months. I have had them stop working four or five times. I brought them back to Costco and they have cleaned them and told me to keep up with replacing the . They said that they were very dirty. These are my first hearing aids so I have no previous experience to compare. I took them into the store a few days ago because the left one stopped working. They cleaned them both, I assumed. Then yesterday the left one stopped working. I changed the filter and the dome and it started working just fine. Today, the right one stopped working, and I changed its filter and dome, and it’s now working again.

I think you are the second person on this forum who has had to have Costco send them back for repair. Or, maybe you are the same person. Hopefully, your experience is an anomaly and not a normal issue. If anyone else has had to have their Jabra hearing aids sent in for repair, even under the warranty, please let us other wearers know, so that we can exchange them for a different manufacturer during the six month trial period.

Yea I may be the same person. I did post last time and had asked if sweat could be the cause. As I remember most people said no it shouldn’t cause the mics to go bad. Some did reply and say they had to send theirs in. One guy thought that perhaps Jabra / Resound had made some hardware fix.

I did ask my fitter if this was common, what he said was it wasn’t uncommon. He didn’t come out and say they had more issues than other manufacturers. I would think if Costco had constant problems with the model they would pull it like they did with the Phonak KS10’s.

I think maybe I’m a little bit of a non typical hearing aid wearer. I feel like either I have really bad luck or I’m doing something to these that most others wearers do. The only thing I can really think of is daily sweat. I’m also bald so I think they get exposed to more sweat than a dude or dudette with hair. Actually, earlier this week I kind of jinxed it, was in middle of working out, wiped my sweaty head and face and thought “I guess it wasn’t the sweat that killed the mics the two other times”

These are my second pair of hearing aids I have owned. It’s definitely not the , domes or even the receivers being faulty, I have a drawer full of domes, wax guards and a pair of extra receivers I bought and replacing those were the first thing I tried. Streaming audio everything sounds balanced / same level. The mic problems become super obvious in a noisy environment, all sound is muffled out of the bad hearing aid.

Yes, I agree, that if Costco had a series of problems they would stop selling them. I maybe just producing more wax than what my hearing aid fitter expected. She gave me a year’s supply of and domes. So far I have used two of them in less than two months. The previous three failures were fixed at Costco by cleaning them throughly. I posted a question asking how often do members here replace their wax filters. The answers were all over the place. Maybe I am a high ear wax producer and never knew it. :thinking:

I got in my loaners. The fitter that helped me this time was even more helpful than the last. I asked him straight up, “what’s up with these hearing aid’s, I’m thinking if they have a mic problem one more time I may throw in the towel and buy a new pair”.

He said it’s a little odd but it seems like some people with EP20’s are fine, never have any problems with the mics. Then there are people like me that are plagued with mic problems. Send them in every 5-6 months. He said he’s been thinking about it for awhile, first thought surely there must be something the subset of people that have issues must be doing. I brought up the sweat, that I probably sweat on them more than the average person wearing them and said he doubts that is the problem. He said though it just looks completely random.

He did tell me some good news. He showed me that Jabra is sending back repaired hearing aids with a different front shell. The mic ports are larger and different. This kind of shows that Jabara is aware of some sort of issue and hopefully this will fix them.

So if I were you, I wouldn’t worry too much unless you start having mic problems.

I’ve had EP20s for eight months and have had no reliability problems! I do not wear them at the gym because I feel no need to and feel that they might fall off while exercising. Otherwise, I wear them all of my waking hours.

I got mine in January 24. So far, mine have been replaced 3 times. For a few months, the microphones were plugging up about once per week. They replaced the shells and the microphones made it a month before they plugged up. This past time, I made it a day or two before they seemed plugged up again.

I have been wearing hearing aids from Costco for more than 20 years and I have never had this many problems. If I could trade them in tomorrow, I would. I just don’t know which ones I would switch to. I am very disappointed in them and in Costco.

This is classic sweat/salt water ingress into the goretex filters.

It goes in, then dries (not rinsed) and crystals form. Every gym trip after that adds to it.

IF (With a couple of caveats) you saturate an aid with sweat or seawater it’s preferable to gently rinse the outside with fresh clean water before drying thoroughly.

Hopefully, I won’t have this issue because I don’t exercise nor do I sweat. If what you say is true, then why would anyone wear hearing aids to the gym? Because of the Jabra EH Pro 20 hearing aids being so small, the microphone ports are just two very, very, small openings.

In reply to @Flyboybob

@Flyboybob said:

If what you say is true, then why would anyone wear hearing aids to the gym

It’s the lesser of several evils: mics are susceptible to multiple forms of contamination, you put a filter material in the way to prevent that; if you flood the filter material with contamination; they’ll stop working. Flushing the material and drying them thoroughly is probably the best idea.

In reply to @Flyboybob

I work out at home. Do some Peloton classes for weights and cycling, My wife prefers I don’t just crank up the volume as her office is just above our gym. I don’t want to wear headphones, I fear more hearing damage.

Um_bongo makes it sound really like sweat is highly likely the cause of mine. Mine should have the new shell when they come back, hopefully having the new shells and rinsing them will be enough to get some more life out of them.

It sounds like a design flaw. Probably my last pair of resound made ’s

In reply to @mystuart

I have been doing that every morning right before I put them in my ears. I was told to do it in the morning so that the ear wax will dry overnight and be easier to clean out.

I am one of the lucky ones. I have had my receivers replaced a couple times (I probably pull too hard on my power domes that seat tightly) and cleaned at Costco a couple times since their release. Otherwise replacing the filters and domes once in a while and I have been golden. I also have the Galaxy S23U at 6.1.1 and updated firmware on the EP20s so I have very good support. I also have the app listed in the “Never auto sleeping apps” file in settings which keeps the app from disconnecting from the aids most of the time but no longer randomly. I do not sweat much however and I regularly clean the wax from my ears.

Good luck to those with issues.

I try not to wear my Jabra aids when I sweat. This protects my investment. I wear earbuds during my workouts.
You could do like I did to be pro active and buy
the $45
PerfectDry Q.R. 45 min. Ultra Fast Hearing Aid Dryer & Dehumidifier Accessory | Dry Box Kit | Removes Sweat & Moisture from Hearing Aids, Airpods, Wireless Earbuds, Ear Amplifiers, Cochlear Implants
https://a.co/d/a47xsZo14
That link is from Amazon.
Hearing aids must be handled with extra care, moisture is one of the top enemies of electronic devices like hearing aids!

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