Sorry this is lengthy but the devil and time is in the details I guess. I hope this makes sense. The timeline is right to the best of my memory. The paragraphs might have gotten jumbled as my phone isnt the greatest and its a small screen compared to ny recently deceased Apple Desktop.
Im in a bind after my Left HA Lumity 90 Battery burned out and is in need of repair which i hoped to get on the way to Phonak for expeditious repair. I want to share my experience. Let the Buyer Beware.
I got no response from Discount Daily in Tennessee to my Dec. 13 email but it was late in the day. So I sent another email Monday Dec 16. I finally got a terse reply either Monday or Tuesday not sure. A phone number was given and instruction to call service department. He wrote they will help you get repair. Thats all. He (Will) was usually agreeable and courteous. Not so much this time
My call was answered by a rather loud boisterous sounding young woman - She asked for phone and address and then said you have Lunitys you got in August last year. We can mail you batteries $15 shipping fee. We had trouble communicating as she kept overtalking me. She offered to send me video instructions to change batteries despite being aware i had the HAs over a year and would know the procedure by then. Plus Lumitys are rechargeable only. For someone working in Service she didnt seem to know the product.
Eventually she realized both H. A. s would need to be sent for repair. I was distressed at the news and told her thats means i will be deaf probably 3 weeks because of holidays slowdown. A little empathy wouldve been nice but she sounded too cheerfully oblivious of the impact on my holiday plans. Having worked in a call center for AT&T I know the importance of listening skills yet she continued to babble on. She finally told me THIS CALL IS OVER and disconnected. I wouldnt have been unemployed by nightfall at AT&T with her kind of attitude.
The employees and the product are a package deal and I would never have made such a vitally important purchase if Iâd known how disappointing and frustrating this would end up being.
Im disappointed at the disregard ive felt the last few days. People have a right to know what they are getting in return for their investment so thats why ive taken the time to report my experience. Maybe others wouldnt have taken it so seriously. Im just giving my point of view.
l sent another email to Will that the call to service was unproductive because whoever answered seemed confused and had little knowledge about the product. I asked him to contact me to get the return worked out. He never responded. Lack of response and concern are disappointing.
Anyway Im getting by ok with one HA because its just me and my two dogs. Large groups and noisy environments are challenging even with 2 hearing aids so one is going to be a struggle. But at my age I dont take Christmas with family for granted. LAST CHRISTMAS was my first in a long time that I was able to hear and talk with everybody and get to know my great grandciildren. I was so looking forward to another one like that this year.
Anybody know What ARE the Obligations of online providers of Hearing Aids?. There may be different rules depending on where they are located. I know there are good ones out there because Ive read about them here. I rolled the dice I know buying online but it was all i could afford. The Lumitys are a big improvement in technology and while not perfect Ive been satisfied with them.
Yeah this situation is not unheard of in this industry, the first red flag was when they sent a deaf person a phone number to call instead of simply sending the information back to in their first reply by email, but all is not lost, you can take the HAs to any audiology clinic to be repaired under warranty, so dump these useless lot and find another local clinic to help you out, also most clinics can find out your warranty situation with Phonak.
The second clinic is under no obligation to offer that service, and potentially wouldnât do it without a reasonable handling fee and service charge. What if the aids come back and the user settings arenât on them?
That disturbs me, that another Private A.uD Clinic might react like that Stephen, my first thought would be, whereâs their humanity⌠Or is it all about the money, and clients are a mere afterthought, for me if someone does you a good turn, you are most likely going to go back, when you need a new set of aids, thatâs not to say you shouldnât pay something, you should⌠Although this should be a nominal fee. But, some less fortunate elderly folks, donât have much disposable income, hence why they need to shop around, to my way of thinking, a warranty is a warranty, it should be accepted at any Phonak A.uD whom distributes their aids, any out of pocket expenses should be covered by the manufacturer, after all is said and done, they made the faulty goods, the hearing aid user shouldnât be way out of pocket for their shabby workmanship! There is something inherently wrong with the whole hearing aid system, where a warranty only exists if itâs done through the actual sellerâŚSellers move on, they sell up, they retire, some online ones ignore the plight of requests for a repair serviceâŚIt should be Phonakâs responsibility to guarantee a warranty service, no matter who sold you the hearing aids!!! The whole system is flawed⌠Apologies, rant over! Cheers Kev
Youâve gone to âBig Boxâ to buy the aids because they were cheaper, but now you expect your local âcorner storeâ to fix them for you?
Youâre more than welcome to try this with ANY big branded commercially available product or service if you like. Your contract/consumer rights exist with your supplier.
In fact Iâll happily sell you/anyone a pair of Intent 1 (with 2 year warranty) for ÂŁ2795 if you promise to take them elsewhere to get them fixed/tuned.
Also, just fwiw, why should my other customers (whoâve actually paid the price) suffer a lesser service because you chose to use A. N. Other (Big Box Online Clinic) instead of paying a local professional who pays taxes and spends their money in the local economy.
Especially when Mr Big Box pays lots of their employees a subsistence wage and looks to offshore their tax operation to avoid paying tax in the same localeâŚâŚâŚ
Why not, their not losing anything and sure a fee would be the norm in any situation where a business offers a service, as for the âuser settingsâ well most clinics understand this cannot be guaranteed, so the clinic could offer to âsaveâ them just in caseâŚbut yeah thatâs probably asking them a bit much.
Well yeah and why not, I mean itâs this typical take on the business end that so many people complain about, thereâs this âthingâ that clinics are exclusive in what they should offer, so Iâm with @kevels55 on this, remember the clinic donât fix anything, the warranty is with the manufacturer, so itâs the manufacturerâs device, the clinic is just the âmiddle manâ I think everyone who wants to be in the Oticon bootcamp should take up your offer and just DIY, also the take that somehow your other customers are supposed to be suffering because people choose to buy their HAs from someone else, one thing in life thatâs guaranteed is taxâs, you canât get away from the IRD, import/export is a way of life for any business, including HAs manufacturers.
The âuser settingsâ might not be recoverable from a flat aid.
You connect the aid up and it âbricksâ itself.
The aid gets repaired and the client dislikes the sound: do they have the right to demand a retest and re-tune as part of the âfree serviceâ?
The aid gets lost in transit.
The aid physically breaks during handling.
At what point do you think the liability should rest with the âGood Samaritanâ?
Donât get me wrong, weâve fixed all the above in the course of helping genuine cases, but why should I have make a decision about laying off a marginal staff member over Mr Billionaire Big Box owner who wants another property?
As for the Inland Revenue: Boots donât pay tax here, Specsavers donât pay tax here and Amplifon donât either: we left the EU on a Billionaire campaign that bombed us out 4 weeks before EU rules about paying tax in the same jurisdictions where money is earned were to land.
All could be done at home to those minor things, no I was talking ârealâ repair, something like, say the battery swap on a Phonak, circuit issues or even a bricked device for whatever reason
You can cut your hair with a clippers in your house, but it doesnât become something you donât have to pay for if you walk into a shop and expect it to be done to a standard on the high street.
And your whole argument is âcakeismâ to the nth degree.
It certainly sounds like youâve been through a lot with your customer service experience. Particularly, it must be draining calling for help and having the representative be unversed in the product.
As far as obligations for online retailers, I donât think it is any different from those for brick and mortar clinics. However, online sales regulations likely vary state to state. As of right now, prescription hearing aids are not sold directly from manufacturers to users. For example, you canât go to Phonakâs website and have prescription hearing aids shipped to you. OTC hearing aids, on the other hand, can be sold and shipped directly from the manufacturer to the user. In your case, the issues you are encountering seem to be stemming from the retailer rather than the manufacturer.
Regarding comments here about what is or should be covered under a manufacturer warranty, the truth is that hearing aid manufacturers donât really reimburse private accounts. Now, if a hearing aid is under a manufacturer warranty, I wonât charge a user for a replacement receiver itself since Phonak will send me one to replenish my stock. However, manufacturers do not pay account-holders for billable hours and/or labor costs. An audiologist with a Phonak account is not the same thing as a Phonak employee, and that is why it is normal for clinics to charge for services, regardless of whether a device is under manufacturer warranty.
I was in the service business.
As a general rule if you touch equipment the customer thinks itâs yours.
Doesnât matter if itâs a different part that breaks six months later, itâs your fault.
Thatâs the problem when you get involved with something you did not sell and the customer is not yours from the start.
My business the first year of warranty is your responsibility as far as labor goes if you sold the equipment. Parts was
the equipment maker.
Even the three year labor and parts was not true.
You only got paid ex amount of time.
If I did not sell it I told the customer he was responsible for all extra time.
If I sold it, it was my problem.
Warranties can be problematic.
They shouldnât be, but yeah this is why thereâs so much consumer protection laws around, which of course can be very confusing, I have found HA manufacturers to be amazing and in most cases go beyond what one would expect, unfortunately sometimes something in the middle can get in the way a bit, so labour costs and shipping, this definitely falls on the consumer and not the clinic willing to help out in a situation where someone is trying to get their hearing health back on track, the op was clear that they couldnât function without them, this is not a minor inconvenience, and letâs not forget, this is not just any electronic device, itâs a medical device, you canât compare in these situations, ya know itâs not a weed eater or microwave, hairdryer etc
I know itâs a medical device thatâs important.
The problem is as um- bongo stated.
The probable reason clinics donât want to get involved is itâs a can of worms that gets opened.
Like he said if it gets lost who pays.
The wearer says, hey this thing is not set up right, you did something. It starts to spiral downward.
Thatâs probably why they really donât want to get involved.
Side story.
My late friend fixed a womanâs equipment that no one could.
She said Iâm not paying you.
He asked why. She told him she already paid to have it fixed.
He said I fixed it Iâm not him.
He never got paid.
So I can see both sides.
It is a bit of a minefield, were the seller holds the warranty, but it does place the hearing aid user in a bit of a predicament, if the seller refuses to comply, even though the aids are under warranty, you are basically knackered to the tune of several thousand dollars/pounds! So, even if the seller is willing to send in the aids for repair, youâre still expected to pay through the nose, for a faulty set of aids? It doesnât seem very fair, and looks like a partial warranty at best! The manufacturer appears to be in a win, win situation⌠It would seem, from what I have read on here, manufacturers just replace aids with new ones, itâs probably not cost effective to have them repaired, itâs maybe cheaper to dump the old aids, they most likely cost about $100 max to make? Around 5 minutes per aid to reinstall the userâs settings with Target 10.0, if itâs your own A.uD whom is dealing with the repair/replacement, then apart from shipping, there shouldnât be too many other costs involved? I have to admit, I have never been charged a cent, for any repairs at Boots Hearing Care, especially RIC receivers with custom moulds, I kept blowing 105db receivers regularly, none lasted any more than 10 months, sometimes only 6 months, I reckon, I probably had 4 or 5 sets made, so much so, on the last occasion my A.uD had 2 sets made, with one preemptive set as spares, all my moulds, packets of twin walled tubing, boxes of ear hooks for other BTE aids, this was all part of the service, I guess if what @Um_bongo says is correct, if they donât pay tax, then they could probably afford it! Perhaps, I have been spoiled? Cheers Kev
Thank you kind Sir - Thats fantastic.news of which I am sorely in need. Is this true across the board in civilization? God Bless Harbingers of good news !
Oh dear, believing there is hope felt most refreshing to my weary soul. Was my optimism too hasty? Say it aint so?
I guess I better continue reading. in the meantime i stubbornly tenaciously cling to hope unless and until an overlarge low-flying dodo bird swoops in and takes a dump on me.
The truth is I saw online as my only hope as I am struggling just to get by. Maybe some would say TOUGH Luck Sucker but I hope they dont prevail.
I dont want to believe charlatains and financial predators are given the âlegalâ upper hand. Its hiway robbery? i acted in good faith and sellers should be required to do the same.
Where is King Solomon when you need?
Just a few days ago I saw a signature closing
âWith great service in mindâ
Where that statement is currently I cannot say with any definite degree of accuracy as I currently browse the web. I have read that even barristers state (loosely paraphrased) they cant dont or wont read all the whereases and heretofores aka FINE PRINT in the reams and reams of boilerplate blah blah blah contained in STUFF.
My common sense opinion is that such reading is impossible. It might consume 2 or 3 or more lifetimes doing nothing but reading such verbose verbosity
I just a few minutes ago while attempting to get an up to date âreadâ on Discount Dailyâs âad infinitumâ stuff quickly gave up as it seemed to be imbued and heavily presenced with lots of Shapeshifters and Tricky Dick terminology that NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DONâT basically. I wouldnt want my life to depend that whatever they said 5 minutes ago remains wit no alterations.
If you try reading overlong I think chances are great your eyes will roll bavk in your head after which you may be vapirized at the sole discretion of some unspecified SOMEBODY.
So I QUIT, i gave up, its too late my head too muddled. You can read it for yourself if you dare. Maybe they have multiple versions if who they are. Either way its late and I think Iâm aging at an accelerated rate because of all this nonsense.
As soon as I get much needed zzzzzs I will return sometime unless I die first of natural or unnatural causes.
Only with difficulty was I able to keep my said two blue eyes from rolling back in my head so caution is advised.
Well they seem eager to get involved in anticipation of a forthcoming payoff but once thats done probably it all comes down to Whoâs got who in the side pocket by Professor Plum in the Observatory.
SoooâŚ
Unless you have a bevy of lawyers in shark skin suits theres no way to know anthing basically. Thats my take, sad but true
instead of simply sending the information back to in their first reply by email, but all is not lost, you can take the HAs to any audiology clinic to be repaired under warranty, so dump these useless lot and find another local clinic to help you out, also most clinics can find out your warranty situation with Phonak.
