Comparative Review of 5 Hearing Aids

So, Barry, tell us what Phonak told you when you tried to con them out of a pair of B90 Titanium CICs?

Phonak initially agreed to participate in the review, then changed its mind and stonewalled me. So, actually, the final review is even more independent than it otherwise would’ve been.

We subsequently found Phonak customers willing to participate as testers in the review.

Funny you mentioned Walls.

Perhaps you should get them to build a wall between you and them, with the only caveat is that Phonak has to pay for the wall.

See how that one flies…

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Well that explains a lot! Good on Phonak for refusing. Anyone know if the deal was offered to other manufacturers?

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Any review of HAs which uses free HAs from a manufacturer cannot be independent and any results should be ignored.

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Nonsense to this innuendo. Phonak is displaying an inane level of corporate petulance.

The hearing aid industry (manufacturers and audiologists) want to keep the status quo.

Judge for yourself:

Phonak’s media relations people put us in touch with the Virto B90 product manager.
The Virto B90 product manager said Phonak would participate in the review.
Then, suddenly, upper management stepped in. They said no.
Based on initial research I’d done, I was confident the Phonak product would win the review.
To change Phonak’s mind about participating, I replied to Phonak’s sudden change of heart with the following:

At this point, we have three alternatives:
A. Review the Virto B90 that you supply, and it wins the review.
B. Review a different, less capable Phonak/Sonova device (Several Phonak device wearers have already offered to act as testers). A Siemens/Sivantos/Signia device will likely win the review in this case.
C. Declare in the review that Phonak/Sonova refused to participate.

If you participate in the review, the Virto B90 device will certainly win the review. And we’ll characterize the
Virto B90 as smart, fast, durable, comfortable and effective.

We then did the review without Phonak’s formal (willing) participation.

Phonak Virto B70, not B90, customers were our testers in the review.

The Phonak devices did NOT fare as well in the review as I had thought they would.

Finally, every statement in the review is true and accurate.

In other words - You presented them with an ultimatum!

Just for your information: To do independent reviews you need to buy an item and go through the process just like an average consumer.

A few other items -

Every statement in the review is true and accurate.

No one received any compensation, financial or otherwise, for the review.

Unlike in most reviews, every product reviewed was actually purchased from a vendor.

Think about the thousands of computer hardware and software reviews you’ve ever seen. Did the reviewer (or trade publication) buy all those products? Of course not. The review of 5 hearing aids is an exception to the rule.

We personally have reviewed thousands of products over the past 25-plus years. Some were million-dollar enterprise-level products from, say, Cisco, Sun Microsystems, IBM, HP or CA Technologies. At the end of a review, we’d either send the product back to the vendor or, if the vendor didn’t want it back, we’d either donate it or throw it out.

For a review on topic XYZ that came up on the schedule, we’d often have vendors hesitant to submit products. We (and the trade publication) would tell the hesitant vendor, “If you don’t submit your product for the review, we’ll find something similar or we’ll tell readers you refused to participate.” Happens every day. It’s not extortion. It’s honest truth.

A vendor’s refusal to submit a product for review usually implied it didn’t work as advertised or perhaps that it was difficult to install or use.

No Network Testing Labs person has ever worked for Siemens or Signia, in any capacity.

The survey reinforced what we (and you!) already know - the vast majority of hearing-impaired people don’t have hearing aids. The biggest reason is cost. The next reason is appearance/embarrassment. And ease of use is an important factor. These people are prospective hearing aid buyers, nearly always on a tight budget. They’re not experienced users who perhaps have enough money to buy the latest and greatest.

We did the review - without compensation! - as a public service, to relate to you our experiences with a variety of hearing aids. We deliberately included hearing aids costing hundreds of dollars with those costing thousands, to help people make informed buying decisions.

We’re pushing back on this issue because hearing aid manufacturers and audiologists have for too long blown smoke in the direction of prospective buyers. As a small example, manufacturers like to publish “reviews” on their Web sites - hand-picked, carefully-edited, glowing “reviews.”

Our review of 5 hearing aids is a real review.

I would agree that a lot of reviewers do not have to pay for what they’re reviewing. The practice does raise all kinds of questions, including did the manufacturer select a particularly good one or prep it in a certain way. That’s why Consumer Reports goes out and buys products, but they’re kind of the gold standard. Most reviews we see on the web are not done that way. More transparent ones will thank the manufacturer for providing the item for review.

VPN circumvents that easily.

Still no survey…yet another mention here…not mentioned in the “review”.
You’re just pulling crap out of thin air otherwise.
You started a “review” with some made-up conclusions and made up your own bias towards many areas of the industry. That is how many people here got flashing lights and warning signals.
If you had written anything along the lines of “this is the scope of what we’re reviewing” then maybe people here wouldn’t have been alarmed. If you had not stated your dismissal of many areas of the industry then maybe people here wouldn’t have been alarmed.

I’m all for keeping the manufacturers honest. The pricing issue seems to be more at the retail end. Keep them honest.

Actually, what you sent them was this, before the review was ever written

We’d like to provide you with a positive, compelling review of the Phonak Virto B90 Titanium device. The comparative review will persuasively express the benefits and features of the Virto B90, and it will show sales prospects why purchasing cheap hearing devices through the Internet is a bad idea.

At this point, we have three alternatives:

A. Review the Virto B90 that you will supply to us. It wins the review.

B. Review a different Phonak/Sonova device (Several Phonak device wearers have already offered >to act as testers). A Siemens/Sivantos/Signia device will likely win the review.

C. Declare somewhat harshly but truthfully in the review that Phonak/Sonova refused to participate.

If you participate in the review by providing a pair of Virto B90 devices (the first alternative):

The Virto B90 device will win the review. We’ll characterize the Virto B90 as smart, fast, durable, comfortable and effective.

The iHear Medical HD device ($349 USD each, sold via the Internet) will lose the review.

A paper trail is a terrible thing. People rely on the Independent reviews they can get access to buy life changing equipment. Duplicitous and dishonest reviews are of no use to them.

If Signia did actually support this, it would appear it has backfired in the most unusual way possible… I’m sure they love that Barry quoted online pricing and fit the Silk himself :rofl:

@BarryNance-TestLab
Sadly, your review is another empirical look at a modest collection of hearing aids. Unfortunately, there isn’t another way to look at them other than subjective experience coupled to superficial hardware glances.

We know it shouldn’t be different from a Tom’s Hardware review which look at a host of measurable events. But the proprietary nature of the industry makes that difficult to impossible.

I suggest you write off hearing aids or prayerfully dig deep. Your look may have been well intentioned but testing was as superficial as some of our discussions.

You see BarryNance-TestLab…that’s credible. I’ll put some faith in Abram putting some faith in geo_C therefore faith in his source.
Your whole presentation starts out in a position of corruption. It’s tainted. Therefore worthless.

I think most, if not all the reviews we see are “tainted” in some way. I’m not sure it makes them worthless. One needs to read between the lines. If one does so, one can usually glean some info, although it may not be what the reviewer intended.

The best reviews we get for HT are the ones we get in person. We attend the HLAA conference most years and setup a booth and two laptops and give out free hearing aid batteries for reviews. We check the aids on people’s ears and make sure we get them on the right product page. So much great info.

I’m just saying that this guy has been caught out corrupting his review thereby rendering it worthless.
Let alone all his biases.

Of course we don’t know how much corruption might be in any and all reviews. For me…for online reviews…I actually look for negative reviews. Someone has taken the time to sign up and say their piece. Positive reviews can too easily simply be paid. And that has been found to be true. Particularly now in this day and age of social media and bloggers and box-opening videos etc…the reviewer more often than not is being compensated in some way for their efforts.

Edit: Thinking further on this and what with another thread going on…I suppose one needs to keep a wary eye on negative reviews as being paid-for slamming of a competitor.

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I’m curious with the in person reviews if there’s any interaction that leads to clarifying what kind of info you want and what they’re trying to say?

What this Nance fellow did was unethical at the very least, if not outright blackmail. Kudos to Phonak for not playing along.