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Help: Phonak Paradise P90-R: Left aid stops working every day

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I’ve had these hearing aids for a year and a half and they work great - when they work. The right side always works and is flawless. However, about a year ago, the left side just stops working at random and often stays off for hours/days, but comes back on again at random.

I contacted the dealer and Phonak about this and I guess it’s not uncommon for the left aid to stop working like this. They provided a reset procedure and I found another separate procedure online.

Procedure 1:
Hold power button for 14 seconds
Put aid in charger for 4 seconds
Pull it out and hold power button for 5 seconds

If the aid doesn’t light up, this procedure does force it to finally light up and blink a few times (green light), and then a few seconds later, it blinks a few times more. However, most of the time, this doesn’t actually make it turn on. Sometimes the light stays on constantly, sometimes the light just turns off and stays off.

Procedure 2:
Hold the power button for 30 seconds
Put in charger

This has worked a few times as well, but most of the time it doesn’t.

Most of the time, I’m sitting around for an hour(s) trying different combinations (back and forth in and out of the charger) and something just happens and it works again. Sometimes it works for 15 minutes, a few hours, a few days or even a week or so. At some point, the left aid just stops working at random again. Sometimes the left aid just doesn’t work for the entire day, so it becomes a 2-day job. Sometimes after a full day, I give up and put them in the charger for the night and it just miraculously works the next day for no apparent reason.

Note: I have this hearing aid hooked up to bluetooth on my phone and also my computer. I believe the problems are related to bluetooth - some flaw or bug that Phonak never fixed. Again, I try combinations of disabling the bluetooth and enabling it while doing my hearing aid resets.

When I first got these Phonak Paradise P90-R aids, I would have given this 5/5 stars. However, I’m getting real sick of playing around with the left aid, with no consistent result with resets. It’s even worse when half the time, the left aid goes out at the doctors office or store - for no reason at all - and the only way to reset is to put it in a charger. Again, getting real sick of Phonak.

Question:

Does anyone know another sure-fire reset procedure to get the left aid working?

19 people in this conversation10 min readJump to latest
Edited

In reply to @peppy

I had the same problem. It turned out that the receiver cable had a temporary short circuit. The problem was solved after I replaced the receiver.
You can do the replacement by yourself. The receiver can be bought online.
EDIT:
Ialso suspected bluetooth at first because I mostly had failures after the double-tap. Which in reality was always a movement of the receiver cable.

They should be under manufacturer’s warranty. Have you thought about sending it back to the seller who can send it on to Phonak for repair? Phonak will replace your hearing aid with new parts. P90’s generally come with a five-year manufacturer’s warranty in the UK.

For the ones I had the warranty included the receivers (not the active vent ones - those have 6 months warranty).

Have you tried reseting the aid? Hold the top button down for 20~30 seconds. No light will come on on the aid. Put it in the charger for several seconds and remove. This will turn the aid back on and reset it. It worked on mine.

In reply to @sterei

After researching Phonak P90-R on this forum, I found a couple of other posts that suggest the receiver could be bad as well. It didn’t make sense since the aid will start working after a random reset, sometimes working for days without issue before it fails again. But maybe there is something goofy going on with the receiver.

I switched the receivers between the aids, and it worked fine on the right side, but not the left. The odd part is then the right side lit up green and just stayed green, which never happens on the right side, so maybe there is something to it.

I ordered some receivers on ebay, so I’ll test this out in a few days and see if everything works. If this is the case, Phonak really should put something in their user guide, such as a constant green light being an indicator of a broken receiver, or an aid that is inconsistent in turning on.

Very well done!
Sorry, I should have mentioned the trick with swapping the receivers. Have forgotten about it.
I’sure the problem will be solved with the new receiver.

I have not had this problem at all. Tell your audiologist you want them looked at while they’re stiunder warranty. I have phonak paradise aids and they both work all the time

This happened to me too with the KS10. I changed the receiver and the problem was solved.
I wondered if the problem had been caused because pulling the out with molds isn’t as easy as with domes especailly if you forget to use the pulling-out thing because you’ve had one too many vinos.

I’d just thought I’d write an update and that I’ve solved the mystery of the hearing aid. I replaced the hearing aid receiver about a month ago and this Phonak Paradise P90-R has worked flawlessly since then, like brand new. Very reliable.

@peppy said:

However, about a year ago, the left side just stops working at random and often stays off for hours/days, but comes back on again at random.

So, your hearing aid wasn’t working properly for TWELVE MONTHS and this was worth how much in savings for you to not hire a local professional to fix it?

I don’t know. I get it. I avoid medical appointments just like anyone else, and tolerate all sorts of things that I probably don’t have to tolerate if I would just make a few phone calls and organize my life a bit. But at the same time I sort of don’t get it. I guess it’s just a lesson for myself when I notice that I’m tolerating something that is negatively impacting my quality of life and that I could solve with an amount of money that probably wouldn’t hurt me for long.

Queue my looking around and thinking that I should probably clean off my desk because I’ll enjoy the long term clean desk more than I will probably hate the 15 minutes of cleaning. :laughing: I suppose we all just make our own random cost-benefit analyses every day.

Edited

The problem is that the local hearing aid professional refuses to fix it because I didn’t buy it from them, I’m not their customer, which is understandable. I got an awesome Black Friday deal in 2020 buying it from England, saving $2000-$3000 of dollars buying it new there vs here in the US, and getting a 5 year warranty on top of it. (The price even today still isn’t as cheap as the Black Friday deal from 2 years ago)

However, the drawback is if something fails, I have to ship it back to England, which takes 2 weeks. (They said there was a 1-year international or US warranty too. I could have shipped it to Phonak US, but I waited past the deadline). I was right on the verge of doing so many times. Also, I’m having a bit of an unrelated medical issue with lots of doctor visits and calls, so I need the hearing aids (even just 1) while I’m talking with the doctor, so I didn’t want to be without hearing aids for even 2 weeks unless the whole set failed completely.

Luckily, I learned a bit of cheap trick here, so they are working like new now! Also bought a couple of spare backup receivers in case they break again.

@peppy said:

The problem is that the local hearing aid professional refuses to fix it because I didn’t buy it from them,

Wow totally unacceptable, their definitely not a “hearing aid professional” you did the right thing to shop around to get the best deal possible, Phonak will accept hearing aids for repair outside of any warranty at your expense, in most cases it’s not a lot compared to buying new.
But you’ll find in most cases you don’t need the so called " professional" as there’s a lot you can do yourself!

Yeah, I would have expected them to repair it for you. Not for free of course, but still repair it.

I can see why they wouldn’t ship it internationally for you though.

Edited
@peppy said:

Note: I have this hearing aid hooked up to bluetooth on my phone and also my computer. I believe the problems are related to bluetooth - some flaw or bug that Phonak never fixed. Again, I try combinations of disabling the bluetooth and enabling it while doing my hearing aid resets.

Weirdly, I had this happen to BOTH of my Phonak Marvel aids just the other day for the very first time.

I’d had my hair done at the salon, and I always swap in my older Phonak Audeo B-Direct aids. I didn’t even bother to disconnect the Marvels from my One+ phone with Android 12 on it. And of course, you can only pair ONE set of Phonaks with a phone (kinda dumb, but then so is most of the world).

The minute my hair appt was over, I swapped aids. I took out my B-Directs and put in the Marvels. I got about 10 seconds of “live” and then … DEAD AS A DOORNAIL. Annoyed, I removed the Marvel aids from my ears and opened and closed the battery doors. Put 'em back in and … again, 10 seconds of “live” then DEAD AGAIN. I repeated that operation like a donkey till it dawned on me that Bluetooth could be a prob here? I have no idea why, cuz the Marvels were still paired and connected to the phone.

Even so, I took the phones out of pairing (but left them connected), re-paired them and voila! The entire prob vanished. I am totally clueless as to how or why this would happen, but I’ve always swapped in my old aids for salon, followed by new aids immediately after the app’t for the past few years. Never any probs with my aids being on or working with BT.

The only thing that changed recently is that my phone had Android 11 on it till about 2 weeks ago. So this was the first time I was doing the swap with Android 12 on the phone.

Could there be a connection between the newer Android 12 and my Phonak aids going DEAD? It’s a question I’ll ask at the Pearly Gates some decades from now I guess!

In reply to @1Bluejay

@1Bluejay said:

Could there be a connection between the newer Android 12 and my Phonak aids going DEAD? It’s a question I’ll ask at the Pearly Gates some decades from now I guess!

I suspect so, the One+, Phonak, Android 12 combo has been problematic with my Roger ON. So far no issues with my P70 aids thank God.

Jim

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