I first went to a place that sells hearing aids. I asked if they thought hearing aids would help my problem. Seeing that selling hearing aids was their business, of course they said yes. The young woman who administered the hearing test did, I thought, a very professional job. She told me they had some excellent aids on sale and could fit me with a pair for $2750. I made sure I could return them for full credit before I wrote the check. She fitted them that day. They were more of an aggravation than a help. I went back for adjustment. The adjustment didn’t really improve things. I went back gain near the end of the trial period and told her that the aids simply did not help my hearing. She took them back, without argument, and told me my refund would arrive in a couple of weeks. She seemed to know what she was talking about, was friendly without being flirtatious, and seemed to really care about doing a good job. A year went by and I decided to try to buy some aids off eBay and self program. First, I needed an audiogram, so I made an appointment with the audiologist at an ENT I had visited before. I had to see the ENT first, even though I stated up front that I was there only for the audiogram. The audiologist did the audiogram and then sat me down to discuss the results. She was very up front about my hearing loss and told me that I likely would not recover enough hearing even with aids to hear well. When I asked about frequency lowering, she told me that she had mixed results with it and that older folks usually didn’t benefit. We never discussed what brands of aids she dispensed, though she displayed my audiogram using Siemens software. I had to pay for the audiogram, but there was no resistance to giving me a printed copy. In my experience, which is probably different to most, both seem to provide the same services by different means with different philosophies. The audiologist working for the ENT could instantly get advice and testing for medical issues. At a price, of course. I didn’t ask the fitter at the hearing aid store for a written copy of my audiogram because she ended up doing it for free, since I didn’t actually buy aids from her. I figured she considered the test results as belonging to the store, not me. The only thing that didn’t ring true from the hearing aid store employee was that she told me that the aids I trialled could not be resold. I didn’t really believe that. At most, they could re case them, or probably just give them a good cleaning. Another hearing aid store actually sells used aids on their website.