Dr Cliff: OTC Hearing Aid Companies have lost Billions

Dr Cliff has been an OTC supporter from the beginning. His opinion is his opinion and that he can openly say he was wrong tells you it isn’t a one-sided story in his case. I thought it was an interesting starting point for a discussion and he made a lot of relevant points. You can disagree with him if you want, but think you’re incorrect if you think this video didn’t meet his usual standards.

The Wall Street Journal2 has one company reporting a 40% return rate as their reason for shutting up shop.

If people are wondering why hearing aids are so expensive, look to the average $800 cost required to attract a single new patient.

Most people with mild hearing loss just don’t want hearing aids, as shown by the 0.6% increase in hearing aid adoption following the introduction of OTCs.

We’ll see if Samsung’s new galaxy buds hearing aid feature4 co-developed with NAL and using the NAL-NL2 prescription formula does any better. It might be that bluetooth earbuds are a better way to achieve the goal of what OTCs promised.

Ha ha Billions of Bollocks, check out the moronic still from YouTube.

I'm not sure they've lost $Billions.

Our OTC range has been going about a six weeks and is ticking over. The reject/return rate is about 5-10% but that doesn't really do as much damage as rejected product that is dispenser fitted: simply because the up-front time exposure is way less.

You can run pretty 'lean' in terms of business - you don't really need store-fronts or expensive employees, other than for fulfilment by mail and the back end is pretty easy to automate with current 'store' software.

My question to Dr Cliff would be: if the Ai denoising obtained by our current OTC systems is about 15dB and the client has App tunable aids, why couldn't they obtain a similar satisfaction rate vs. dispenser fits? Especially over legacy products: not everyone has Sphere money/insurance.

Where is this $800 number from? Providers don't act like there's much customer acquisition cost. I can barely get basic information out of many when I call up ready to purchase aids. They want to waste my time and money hoping to hook me in later.

They probably don't want to give you that sort of information without you turning up for an appointment because they want to ensure you're a genuine customer and not a competitor checking up on the competition.

I don't think so. I can give them my insurance info which they can verify in their system. In some cases I even had a relationship with the practice such as through the ENT side or from other testing. In one case my insurer reached out. There are a few exceptions but in my calling around it seems if there is high acquisition cost they are not acting that way. Of course they want to avoid taking insurance even if in network and somehow get away with that form of balance billing.

14 days is the requirement for distance selling in the U.K.

That's pretty short. Do many UK practices offer a longer return or is it shorter just for distance selling?

Interesting. I don't think the US has return period requirements that vary by method of sale, but I do wonder whether the state law where the provider or customer is located controls for aids shipped to a customer.

Perhaps it's two weeks from receipt? The UK is small and packages are often delivered quickly.

user490, I was kinda thinking the same thing. I would like to see a breakdown of the $800 "customer acquisition cost". Maybe Cliff Olson got it from " many anecdotal reports".

It's a pretty standard figure. It is about the same amount in my country.