Should I buy cheap or expensive hearing aids?
Posted on October 12, 2009
Filed Under Hearing Loss, The Topics | Leave a Comment
Cheap or Expensive Hearing Aids?
How do you prevent yourself from spending too much money on hearing aids, and getting more technology than you need? Will I get the most benefit if I buy cheap or expensive hearing aids?
I’ve been in the hearing aid industry over 25 years now, and I am amazed at the wide spread of technologies available, costing anywhere from $14.95 for a cheap amplifier that can harm your hearing, to over $10,000 in some places for a set of sophisticated digital hearing aids.
I won’t even spend the time going into why you shouldn’t risk what’s left of your hearing on the $14.95 amplifier that could damage your hearing. Fortunately those probably won’t work for more than a few weeks, and most people wouldn’t use something so large, ugly, noisy, and poorly made.
I do want to give you some tips on how to save investing more than you need to on hearing aids. Many people can get almost as much benefit from a set of hearing aids that cost half or even less than half of the most expensive brands.
Do These before You Even Get a Hearing Test
Only “buy” as much as you need. How do you determine that? Sit down and write a list of your goals: what do you want hearing aids to do for you? If what you are looking for is more than you can expect, an honest hearing aid dispenser or audiologist should be able to point that out to you.
For example, an unrealistic expectation might be: “I want to hear what my children are whispering about me in the next room, while I sit in front of the television with it turned up loud”. Sorry, although you might be amazed at some things that today’s digital hearing instruments can do, they aren’t miraculous!
Here are some goals that you might write down:
• I want to be able to listen to television at the same volume level my spouse or my children prefer.
• I’d like to carry on a normal conversation at the breakfast table without asking someone to repeat themselves.
• I’d like to be able to understand more of what I am currently missing in Sunday school and church.
• I need to be able to talk to someone while driving the car.
• I’d like to be able to understand most conversations on the telephone.
• I want to be able to understand someone across the table from me at a restaurant.
• I need to hear my professor, even when the only seat left is in the back of the auditorium.
• I’m a taxi driver, and I want to focus on voices coming from the back seat, more than any other direction.
• I golf several times each week, and I want to hear my golfing buddies without being bothered by wind noise.
• I’m a jet aircraft mechanic, and I need to be able to move from quiet to extremely noisy settings without having to change a volume control.
• I’m a child therapist, and I need to hear and understand very soft whispers and statements that my troubled children make during play therapy, because I don’t want to ask them to repeat what they just revealed.
• I’m a high level corporate executive, and I need to focus my hearing on only the person in front of me during business social events, and ignore all other sounds around me.
• I’m into competition skeet shooting, and need to hear when someone says “pull”, and yet not be deafened by my shotgun a fraction of a second later.
As you noticed, I got into some specific requests that we have been presented with, and were able to find solutions to, but it’s unlikely that you or any one person would need to have each and every one of those situations addressed.
Only “buy” the solutions you need. If you almost always stay indoors, and spend most of your time with only one person at a time, you can avoid paying for technology that reduces wind noise. If you are always facing the person you are speaking with, you don’t need technology that focuses directional microphones behind you, like the taxi driver does.
If you already know your hearing goals, you can ask your hearing aid provider, if you drop down a technology level or two, if your goals will still be met. One person may need a $7000 set of multi-memory hearing aids, with a remote control built into a wristwatch, but you may meet your own goals with something with half of that investment!
You might also consider the Hearing for Life Plan, a company that I founded in Texas, now being offered nationwide. After an activation fee, which varies by the technology level, you pay a monthly subscription fee of $77 to $117 per month. Active subscribers receive new hearing aids every 48 months, just by renewing their membership. More details can be found at www.HearingAidsForLife.com.
If you have ways you’ve discovered to save money on hearing aids, or ideas and questions you’d like me to write about, please contact me at suggestions@hearinghaven.com. I appreciate you reading my thoughts, but I also would like to hear yours!
Bob Bare
http://www.HearingHaven.com/
http://www.HearingAidsForLife.com/
Comments
Leave a Reply