Audiologist to retain fee if hearing aids are returned during trial period

I had a free trial for Phonak Audeo Paradise earlier this year. I only kept them for about 10 days as I had severe vertigo after a day. The HIS was unqualified to deal with my hearing issues. I returned the HAs and got full refund. It depends on the provider, if there is return fee or not.

I started this thread and I appreciate all the discussion. I ask my audiologist about the $250.00 fee and she said that it should not have been on my contract as I am a returning customer. She crossed out the fee and initialed it. I do understand that a fee may be appropriate in some situations.

I’ve never paid a fee to trial hearing aids. Whatever company I’ve chosen to trial, my AuD has always gotten a loan pair from the company. Which I trialed for 3-4 week. I returned them and trialed another loan pair from a different company. Again no charge, unless the charge is built into the purchase of the aids I bought.

I may be wrong here, but for me, there’s a distinction between a demo and the 30-day trial (which can be extended if your audiologist has a good relationship with brand reps). Demos are generally a set of HAs provided to an audiologist by the manufacturer for obvious purposes, to let patients try them out free of charge, and the HAs are generally marked as demos right on the hardware (I’ve had Paradise and Signia AXs demos).

The 30 day trial is a period of time in which a user can decide if he/she wants to keep the aids after already purchasing (I look at it as just a return/exchange window). I have trialed 2 separate aids as well (Mores and Paradise Lifes), but it involved the actual purchase and payment of the aids in full. When I went from one trial to the other, the difference in price is either owed or refunded. But these aids are new out of the box vs being demo aids that can be passed along.

As long as I ultimately end up keeping a pair of purchased HAs from the audiologist, there is no additional fees/costs outside the quoted price of the aids. However, at the end of all my demoing and trialing process, I choose not to purchase and return any HAs to him, then he does retain $400 out of the costs I’ve already put in, with the rest of the sum refunded back.

Seems rather steep, but when I consider that I’ve thus far put in about 10-12 office visit hours (with more to come), if it’s no HAs after all that and only $400, that’s cheaper than any other specialist visit billing rate in the healthcare industry, so it seems quite fair to me. And all of this information was given to me upfront as well. And I also went in knowing that I would end up purchasing aids from him, it’s just a matter of which ones.

IIRC, when I got my first aids, Widex Senso Diva ITC aids, there was a non-refundable $250 charge if I returned the aids. They were custom aids, and it was a fee to cover taking the impressions and making the shells. With RIC aids I’ve never paid a fee to try demo aids, similar to how @jcw11 describes.