And this is my story. I'm on my third set of hearing aids. The first were fair. The second were not too bad except in noisy places, but one fell out of my ear one day after taking my motorcycle helmet off. I didn't notice it until a while later and when I looked on the ground had found I had stepped on it crushing it. My third set which I am wearing now I paid about $3000 each for are excellent and work very good in noisy places, which the cheap ones won't do. They come with a lifetime supply of batteries which otherwise would cost about a buck each. When I am low on batteries I just make a phone call and they send me a couple months supply. I use 2 batteries a week on each ear.
After spending about 3K each on these aids, I had one go bad after warranty and it cost me $200 to fix. They told me that it had ear wax in it and they had to replace the entire insides. This happened to me twice before I began to wonder, how can a $3000 hearing aid only cost $200 to completely replace? I then had a third one go bad and decided to get something else. Just for the hell of it I blew compressed air in the opening of the hearing aid and it start working again. I've done this at least 6 times in the past year or two, and It has alway restored the hearing aid to the original condition.
Sooo, in my opinion the mark-up on these aids is many hundreds percent. All three sets I have I used an audiologist. The end result is I enjoy almost normal hearing but have to put up with the expense, which is gouging.
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Les
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