Costco has stopped carrying Phonak hearing aids

Now I’m worried, but I guess everyone is!

It is about time for them to change vendors anyway. My KS6 were GN Resound & my KS8 are Rexton HAs.

Costco Hearing Center webpage: --recently it has greatly changed. Since the withdrawal of KS10 and Phonak, the page I now see is bare bones. It promotes remote servicing and only offers 3 brands for sale. It’s clear they are in a holding pattern.

I heard from my Costco HIS I think it was Costco that dropped Phonak. They were very displeased with the way the KS10 issue was handled.

I have had KS10s for about 2 months. In that time one of the batteries will not fully charge (says 99%) and last less than 1/2 a day. At first when I brought them in for inspection/repair, they reset them and told me to come back if the problem persisted. It did, so now the one with a bad battery is out for repair. They also gave me a new charger wall wart saying the one that came with my setup was problematic. Thankfully I kept my old KS9s as backups.

Here are some observations of my KS10 charging quirks. Others have reported similar so perhaps they will apply to you.

Sometimes one aid will blink green when put in the charger, even though I know it’s at a low state of charge. Easy fix is to remove it from the charger, wait for it to start up, and then shut it down (hold the lower button until the light blinks red), and then replace it in the charger.

Some have reported that it’s easiest to just shut down the aids every time before putting them in the charger.

Another note that is that the aids will respond to the app even when they’re in the charger. So to get a feel for what’s going on, open the app when the aids go into the charger.

Yes I know, we shouldn’t have to deal with this stuff, and perhaps there will be a firmware fix eventually.

It has been almost a month since this story first broke, and we know very little more now than we did then; and we know nothing about how Costco is going to move forward without Phonak. What we do know is that Costco is approximately 11% of the U.S. hearing aid market, and Phonak (including the K10’s) were an important part of their lineup. Using their prior history on the Kirkland aids, they were due to announce the K11 a month ago – and still no word. I don’t think that there is any question that hearing aids are important to Costco over all. They certainly can’t be a profit center, but they almost certainly are important in bringing in new members, and the hearing centers that I have been to have been too well supported for them not to be valuable. So, why does there not appear to be a plan?

Not sure how this will impact existing and future members:

ZeroHedge17

ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero

Membership fees were expected to go up. In the past, the basic or “Gold” membership went up $5 per year and the Executive membership went up $10 a year so that’s my best guess.

I am hoping hearing aids are as important to Costco as hot dogs are. LOL

@MDB said:

In the past, the basic or “Gold” membership went up $5 per year and the Executive membership went up $10 a year

Yeah, no. No where near that often. It has been a while since they increased the prices.

Costco Price increase with history11

WH

Poor language on my part. I wasn’t trying to imply that they went up every year, but that the increase was $5 or $10. Since their membership is “per year,” is what I was trying “unsuccessfully” to imply.

I was looking at that. Seems like the next version after the ones they started with. The last version, which I have, is the first one I believe. The ‘best’ quotes on the Jabra page actually say compared to the previous version, so that’s dumb…. I’m happy with them overall, although my left ear is just about at the limit of effective mrie so I’m concerned about next time I have a loss :(. No point worrying until I get there though.

Stopped off at Costco today. Tech referred to the new Jabras as an “update.” She said they’re supposed to do better with speech and last 30 hours on a charge. In the brochure, it claims “150i% improvement in speech understanding” in loud locations which sounds suspiciously like the claim of the Resound Omnia.
I also asked about a new Kirkland model and she said they didn’t think they’d be getting one so it’s possible we’ve seen the end of the KS hearing aid line. They’re had to be an end to the $100 price drop with each new model and all their current RIC models seem to be in the $1600- $1800 range–much better than ~$2500 like 5 years ago. But, who knows she might have just been talking about Phonak.