quote:

Originally posted by 4MUL8R:

I have personally taken their hearing aids in for cleaning and new batteries. NO charge.

I have had Costco hearing aids for more than ten years. Never paid a cent for cleaning, adjustments, minor repairs, nor replacement domes (the part that sticks into your ear).

But free batteries? Nope, never. Except the batteries that come with new hearing aids. Never any other free ones. The local (five minutes from my house) Costco sells a card of 48 batteries for $8.29, so they are practically free, compared to prices at drug stores, hardware stores, and even Walmart.

A little update on my comment about inexpensive hearing aids.

Shot wobble trap yesterday with a bunch of friends, all retired and senior citizens. One of them, a guy I've known for a dozen years or so, has been bitching about his hearing aids for as long as I've known him. He said he pays around $5K for them.

Well, he saw an ad on the TV, some place in Scottsdale is selling hearing amplifiers (not allowed to call them hearing aids) for around $300.00/both ears IIRC and figured he had nothing to lose so he bought them.

He got them Monday and so yesterday was his first day out in public with them. Everyone was watching closely to see if they worked for him as almost all the guys have hearing aids.

Amazing. He heard all the conversations and sarcastic remarks that fly at these get togethers and didn't miss a thing. He said they were working great.

I'll talk to him again next Tuesday and see if he's still happy with them.

Has he ever had the expensive hearing aids adjusted? I understand that calibration is needed from time to time.

Another thing to consider.

If I understand correctly, FDA changed the rules and starting next month (Oct 2022) some classes of hearing aids will be available directly at retail, not requiring fitting or hearing tests. National Council on Aging- OTC hearing aids coming

Won't be the highest power ones (those will still need audiologist/testing) but if your hearing loss is not profound, there may be new options/price points coming to a pharmacy counter soon.

That may have a couple of impacts. 1) the high end ones might have to adjust their pricing down to compete, and 2) it could be that the new OTC ones might do what you want at a lower price point. Costco (and others) will certainly be on top of this development - will be interesting to see how they play it.

If I were in the market, I might wait a few weeks and see how this settles out.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Has he ever had the expensive hearing aids adjusted? I understand that calibration is needed from time to time.

Many times. He's also bought different brands to see if they work better. He said that when the adjustments didn't make any appreciable difference, the audiologists would recommend he buy a different brand of hearing aid and that would probably work...the emphasis on probably as they didn't work any better, but they did line the audiologists' pocket nicely.

What it really comes down to is $5K vs $300.00 and how much extra you get for the extra $4,700.00 and the answer is not much.

It'll be interesting to see what's available in 3 weeks as that's about when Hearing Aids will be sold OTC per Federal Law

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Flash-LB,

FWIW, our local audiologist price matched Costco. Big help to us since Costco is over 60 miles away. Best of luck.