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Is it legal to rent trial hearing aids?

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I think this is a question more for professionals (both audiologists and dispensers) than final users but everyone who knows the answer may join :slight_smile:

An audiologist proposed to me to rent a pair of a well know brand and they were a “trial” (aka “flex”) model. As you know it’s the model you can set with different “tech levels” (aka “classes”), from the basic one to the top level one, to make the user understand what level is better for him/her before buying HAs. I pointed his attention to this fact when he showed me those HAs, eg. “trial” embossed on their bodies and “trial” appearing on the upper side of the sw window to set them but he said it was not important. Moreover I asked if the HAs for rent were those ones or another couple and he answered: “only these ones are for rent”.

As far as I know these “trial” HAs need to be reset every 6 weeks or so (it depends on the brand) because this is the maximum trial period for a buyer to decide to get them or not. That audiologist told me he had to “visit” me every month (4 weeks!) to upgrade HAs settings and to give me new batteries because they’d have been included in my rental contract! All that appeared so strange to me!

Definitely I just wonder if it’s legal or not that an audiologist rents “trial” HAs.
By the way please give a (legal) motivation :slight_smile:

6 people in this conversation5 min readJump to latest

Hi there, what relevance is the legal part, It’s a stupid idea no doubt about it, you should not be renting trial .

Ooooooooooooooh, not liking the sound of this at all. This audi is definitely skirting the bounds of ethical conduct if not outright violating the agreement with the hearing aid manufacturer.

Sometimes strings are attached to a “free trial,” such as, if you decide not to proceed with buying hearing aids from me, I reserve the right to charge a fitting fee–you might see $300 quoted or thereabouts. Not all audis do this. Not every user agrees, but I don’t think a fee like that is unreasonable, because the audi does have to put time into programming the aids and setting up the trial. But no question, it’s a time-limited trial, otherwise rent-free, and you have to return them at the end of the trial, at which time, they can be used by another potential buyer. In the old days, if you didn’t return the trial aids, they’d charge you. Now they could probably just deactivate them remotely.

@hamjor1 said:

Now they could probably just deactivate them remotely.

I don’t think so, how would they do that, it’s not like your are connected to the internet? But that would be scary if they actually where to implement something like that! I think that’s one problem we may have in the future with the relentless internet of things (IoT) being pushed on to consumers.

When I had 3 pairs of trial aids, for 3 weeks each. Each pair was set to work for 22 days then they stopped working. The audiologist set each pair like that on the computer.

The ones I tried were generic, on day 21 she would just reprogram the same aid with a different companies program. I certainly didn’t have to rent them.

In reply to @hamjor1

@hamjor1 said:

This audi is definitely skirting the bounds of ethical conduct if not outright violating the agreement with the hearing aid manufacturer.

Indeed I guessed rental is not ethical just because imho trying means no profit neither for the audi nor for the brand/manufacturer, due to that I’m only interested in evaluating if a behavior like that can be legally punished or not and by whom/what. Due to that I started my 1st post saying I’d like to listen to profs’ opinions because only they know what kind of agreements are valid between them and manufacturers, I mean maybe there could be no law/clause that (explicitly?) forbids rental within their contracts/agreements.
By the way I think manufactures give their trial HAs to audiologists for free, doesn’t they?

By the way what I told above was not the whole story. That audiologist showed me his rental contract, I red it and my attention pointed to “[…] proper diligence of a good father of a family […]” dealing with the care/attention the user had to take of rented HAs. I found it quite funny!
That drives me to think: if renting trial HAs was illegal and, eg., user broke them then audiologist’d ask money to user as compensation based on the contract but… user could report directly to manufacturer that audi rented its trial HAs therefore definitely I think all that could turn into a risk for audi him/herself.

On the other hand, if there was no explicit law/agreement that forbids an audi from renting trail HAs, I mean if it was legal, then all that’d sound like the perfect murder to me: audi earns money and can’t be punished, manufacturer can’t know, final user avoids to spend his/her money to buy top level HAs (if he/she wishes)!

Anyway, not all Brand and Models have DEMO unit, some Clinics are risking to make the actual unit as trial. Nevertheless the wearers will have to take care it too cause it cannot be sell again. Renting hearing aids are depending on their policy how they apply, but of course some clinics are doing it for free as marketing strategy, some aren’t cause they sell only average volume of hearing aid…

In reply to @audio_hunter

@audio_hunter said:

“[…] proper diligence of a good father of a family […]” dealing with the care/attention the user had to take of rented HAs

That’s weird.

But no, I don’t think it’s illegal. Trials are no good for resale, but I don’t think there’s anything illegal about renting them out. They are not necessarily given to the clinician for free, no. They are sometimes, by some manufacturers, but not typically in the volume that would be required to run an all-rental-all-the-time business.

@audio_hunter said:

not ethical just because imho trying HAs means no profit neither for the audi nor for the brand/manufacturer

I mean, if a clinician is giving you a trial for free they are not doing it at “no profit”, they are doing it at a loss.

In reply to @audio_hunter

No I don’t think it’s illegal. I’m suggesting it’s unethical and possibly a breach of contract between audiologist and manufacturer; I’ve never seen their contracts, though, so that part is just speculation. It’s certainly not how manufacturers intend demo units to be used, which is for user trial and marketing; that’s why I suggest it’s unethical. If it’s a breach of contract, that’s a potential civil dispute between the two parties, not a criminal matter.

Yeah the father thing is weirdness.

By the way what do brands/manufacturers give audiologists trial for free? Afaik Phonak and Unitron do that and I’m sure of that because in some manuals of some models (especially top level ones) we can see “trial” or “flex” models listed with other ones of that family (eg. “P70”, “P90”, “Trial”); this means the special thing of trial HAs by Phonak and Unitron is they could be set at different tech levels (eg. as P70" or as “P90” and so on).
On the other hand the other brands with no “special”/dedicated trial HAs could rent them to you but you couldn’t understand it.
Yeah it’s a very muddy thing :slight_smile:

The big deal would be if trial HAs could be reset in remote by the audi before they switch off automatically after 6 weeks :slight_smile:

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