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Oticon hearing aides

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My husband is industrially deaf and has been for decades. He doesn’t recommend Oticon long term and will never buy from them again.

At the time we bought them, I knew he was missing out on so much communication and awkwardly pretending he heard the right question.

We got Oticon hearing aids at that time around $9,000.00 and we bought another hearing aide repair and support insurance type product. Not once were we aware that they would not function properly 5-6 years down the track.

What they never explained in the shelf life is around 5 years and who can afford to replace these digital hearing aides every 5 years. He also bought a Tv hearing relay and relay clip so the sound went straight into his ears. Another $1000 within 6 months. At first they seemed to make life better and he could go to a cinema and watch a movie something he couldn’t actively do since 17 years old.

It did not take long before the little issues started with the hearing aides and it is only because he had an amazing hearing specialist and the additional policy that when bigger issues occurred the sound stopped being able to be turned up and down. Or they ceased that he got any ongoing benefits from them for the next few years.
Oticon’s customer service has been scaled back so much we have to go 45 minutes away to get batteries or an appointment which is hit and miss. but these days that’s how corporations behave it seems to us.

6 years later and they are practically useless the relay clip died without warning and they will look at it but not replace it? The hearing aides wear through batteries at an alarming rate

10 people in this conversation11 min readJump to latest

100% agreed. I will never be purchasing Oticon hearing aids again myself. Mine is an Oticon Xceed1 for my right and unit for my left ear. My first one had major quality issues. It would constantly disconnect when going to the store like Costco, had other imperfections like flutters in the audio when whistling, etc. It also had a major rebooting issue where the aid would randomly reboot straight out of nowhere, among other manufacturer defects.

The aids didn’t even last 90 days before there were multiple issues and it was rebooting 3-4 times a day. So aggravating. Anyone who knows me knows how gentle I am with my hearing aids. I don’t drop them, don’t submerge them in water, etc. But of course, there’s only a 30 day return period (of course). So it was long past the time that I was able to do anything financially to recoup my losses. Around November I got a new hearing aid plus CROS unit that was better and resolved most of the issues, but it still continues to reboot randomly. Clearly, this is a manufacturer defect that is common to Oticon hearing aids.

All it seems is that I just traded what were some relatively minor issues with Phonak for major issues with Oticon. I paid $5,000 for these aids.

After this ripoff, I will never recommend Oticon again. I really wish I stayed with Phonak.

Hopefully soon I can get some new Phonak hearing aids from my Phonak audi.

I have had 7 pairs of Oticon hearing aids in my life and have never had any problems with them. What am i doing wrong?

Well i have been wearing Oticon aids for 15 years and absolutely love them. Everyone is different and no brand of hearing aids work for everyone. I have had bad experiences with orher brands but will never bad mouth them, because I realize that all hearing aids are great in the right situation.

Worn Oticon on and off since 1990. Never had a failure. Enough said.

Can’t claim to have a lot of other brands to compare with, but my Real1 are doing a good job for me. I can’t understand such a sweeping condemnation at all.

My Oticon have been amazing!

I hear well (for my ) with my Oticon HAs over my Phonak HAs.

When I wore Phonak’s, it felt like I wasn’t wearing any HAs.

I just wish I knew why I’m seemingly the only one with a constant random rebooting issue that appears to be a manufacturer’s firmware defect that has impacted both my first set of aids and these new warranty replacement ones, even though it is less and at least on this set, my right one doesn’t disconnect from the unit while at Costco. So annoying.

Edited

They are high tech so it is always possible to get a bad device. So there are odds of failures. You should get it replaced by going to the audiologist.

That has happened at times. I have been wearing aids for 20 years. I that time i had one set of aids that were replaced 3 times. Due to moisture damage. I am a retired IT professional and before IT i was an electronics technician/engineer. High tech definitely is perfect and software is forever full of bugs. It is just a fact of life. And quality control can only fit assembly errors most times. Most devices go through a stage of field failures.

Thank you, @cvkemp. I get it. But at this point my introduction to Oticon has been absolute crap. Throughout my 15+ years of wearing Phonak the only issues I had were at the 18-20 month mark when the hearing aids had to be sent in for warranty replacement simply because I have to use them 24/7 (except while sleeping of course). I had no connection issues with . No rebooting issues. Nothing.

I really don’t trust Oticon any longer and would just prefer going back to Phonak.

Ok, but at the vey least you should probably feed-back your experience and try to get a working solution: even if you just keen them as spares.

In reply to @codergeek2015

My reasons for wearing Oticon is because for me so far Oticon has been the only aids that have given me what I want and need. The ability to understand speech and the sound I want and need. To be honest I have never had an unacceptable hardware experience with any set of aids. But I have had unacceptable performance speach understanding and with general sound. Phonak ran me crazy with the way I felt like I had sound blinders on. I could only here straight in front and only if I was facing the sound. I need to hear all around me. I live in forest and spend so much time around wild animals and nature. And in town I have to hear all around. I also have eyesight issues.

@cvkemp - Was this the case even when your audiologist tweaked the Phonak programs to be fully directional? In my experience, Phonak has the same program settings as Oticon that the audiologist can use to tweak its directionality of sound. And I think they have largely similar settings according to the Target software I used. Pinna Omni could be considered full directionality while directional could be considered “speech in front of you mostly”. Might be worth checking out if by any chance you get back to Phonak again.

Edited

This was back in my early days of aids. I didn’t have any understanding of my aids. All i knew was I complained and my audiologist made the decision to return them and that started my long road with Oticon aids. I have tried different brands since that time including Phonak but kept staying with Oticon.

By the way, @cvkemp - You know what’s really weird? My reboots tend to happen like this, and I just realized it:

At least 90% of the time it’s during a time that my mom’s speaking and there are other noises happening at the same time. But, not always. Sometimes it’s just my mom speaking.
The other 10% of the time when it happens, it’s totally random. It’s still totally random when it happens, but that’s the most consistent random time the reboots happen.

When I had Phonak, I never had those problems. That’s why I just simply don’t trust Oticon any longer and I just want to be rid of it as soon as possible. I’ll keep it as a backup. Just in case. But that’s about it.

Your hearing is such you are pushing the aids very hard just to be able to hear.
I haven’t had a reboot of my aids in a cery long time.
When I was fitted with the 85db receivers my aids were being pushed very hard so I could hear and really not that well. My audiologist switched my receivers to 105db receivers and readjusted my aids. I can now hear very good for my hearing loss and I haven’t had reboots. I believe the reboots are because the aids are working hard to prevent feedback, when the receivers aren’t such to compensate for the hearing loss properly. In otherwords too close to the hearing loss itself.
I have been told that I should have 85db receivers but my worse loss is an 85db loss. And that would mean if my aids were set for 100% of my that I wouldn’t have any overhead to work with. But with the 105db receivers my aids are pushed much more in my worst frequency loss and there is still prevent of overhead.

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