In the US is it feasible to buy new Phonak Infinio I90 Sphere aids on eBay from US company with warranty?

@Sunny said:

Does anyone have experience with purchasing from Genesis or Direct Hearing in the US and transferring the warranty to their own audiologist?

I purchased from FitHearing.com9 and I know some here have discussed buying from Direct Hearing. The hard part is transferring the warranty to their own audiologist. Actually, the warranty is your’s so you can use it with any audiologist. The hard part might be finding an audiologist willing to handle the warranty process for you without a significant fee. By buying online you are saving by unbundling the purchase from the in person fitting and subsequent service. The fee that you will have to pay a local audiologist to process any warranty work and the subsequent refitting may well erase the money saved on the original online purchase. You may want to talk with a local audiologist and see if they would be willing to unbundle the fee (separate the HA cost and the fitting and follow up costs). When purchasing on line the hearing aids will be set up solely based on your audiogram and will not include Real Ear Measurement. I think the online purchasing model is particularly good for those of us who program out own hearing aids. If that is your intention, please disregard most of what I said and plan on using the online audiologist you purchased the hearing aids from to handle warranty work. As an aside, I just looked at Genesis’s offerings on Ebay and note that they are pricing the Infinino R higher than the Infinio Sphere which would give me pause about ordering from them.

Thank you so much for this thoughtful reply Raylock1. Sadly I am not able to take on my own programming…wish there was a place to learn about that! I am not tech savvy and sadly don’t have that engineering mindset. My fantasy is someone with those skills but not an audiologist who is local and could help the many of us who could use some coaching in how to optimize our hearing aid features and perhaps learn about programming on our own. I am in awe of those who can program themselves!! Anyway, I was wondering, as many of us are, about exploring the unbundling aspect and paying my audiologist for new molds and final Real Ear testing to tweak for final fitting. I can ask about that but I am sure its not a welcome question, yet it could potentially save some thousands of dollar while retaining some of the most crucial aspects of the warranty like loss replacement. I will ask and see what happens! Just using the Spheres as loaners during my repair period has shown me the incredible improvement in battery life so I am very interested in proceeding to find my way to upgrade my hearing aids. Thank you again!!!

Some online sellers like FitHearing will do remote fitting and adjustments. I have not tried that so I can not speak to the effectiveness but it seems to be a growing trend. If you are interested, you can call and discuss remote fitting and adjusting with them. I have found them to be very responsive to my questions.