Costco has stopped carrying Phonak hearing aids

The only thing is tho, they will be competing in the OTC market at some stage, sonova won’t let the market run without something, the obvious solution will be with Sennheiser, as their bedside companion for OTC.

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Right. It just won’t be under the Phonak monicker.

WH

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From what I’ve heard Sonova just wants to protect the Phonak brand. Kind of like Mercedes doesn’t make econo cars. The parent company, Daimler however does make econo cars under the Smart Automobile brand. Sonova will likely do something similar with the Sennheiser brand.

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Sennheiser has long been marketed at half the price with rebranding under Massdrop. The Massdrop 6XX is the same the HD 650, but for half the price.

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So we could see an OTC made by sonova, supplied through Sennheiser but rebranded as a Massdrop?

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I think you’ve solved it!

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The permissible output levels for OTC hearing aids are limited, and correspond to “mild to moderate” hearing loss.

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Word has it that the executive branch of Sonovo was infiltrated by an agent of Costco. The said agent had a mission to keep costs down and had smuggled a microfiche blueprint of a secret dossier from Costco proving that the KS10 was selling faster than the Kirkland hotdog and soda special. The agent blew their cover when things were getting hot in the Sonovo boardroom. Taking their jumper off in a board meeting the agent accidently revealed their Costco T-Shirt before hastily covering up. The suspicions of the Sonovo board were further raised when on inspection of the agent’s desk, a warehouse sized box of Reeses chocolate was found in the bottom draw. The agent was now nowhere to be seen and the rumour is that he has infiltrated Demnant or Sivantos - 2 rival clans, in another act of industrial espionage.

Homeland security also suspect that the rechargeable battery associated with the KS10, has been used as a Trojan horse to spy on Americans. A chip was found in the device that was similar to that found in the Amazon Alexa. A conspiracy is unravelling whereby Sonovo are being implicated in Swiss banking fraud. The theory is that Sonovo are gathering intelligence in the habit of the average American folk’s expenditure and banking habits. Sonovo are selling this intelligence to the Swiss banks who plan an assault on the North American market.

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I have my yearly reveal at Costco today.

I’ll be sure to ask about the NSA stuff and whether Sonova is backdoored by clandestine intelligence organisations.

More seriously, does the end of the Sonova/Costco relationship mean there’s no spares for existing HAs? I’m wondering about the longevity of my KS10s…

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@garethjwells: Think about it - if you manufactured devices worn by tens of millions of people that captured every word spoken to them, and most of the words spoken in return, and you could easily “hard code” these devices to connect to other devices and networks clandestinely, and your country had no allegiance to any world power because it called itself “neutral”, how could your company not treat its shareholders to the billions of dollars that foeign governments would pay to get Bluetooth access to these ubiquitous little technological marvels?

Do you still think the NSA spoof is so far-fetched, even though I presented it as a joke?

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Anything is possible nowadays. The power of a computer in your watch, earbuds that can communicate to satellites is a real possibility.

What’s Monicker Lewinsky got to do with anything?

Has anyone asked for a refund of the KS10 hearing aid? Especially the people who are having charging issues with only about 10 hours or less of usage time.

:rofl:

Word up here is that Costco Canada did not have the KS10 return rate that Costco US had, nor does the Audeo P generally. Given that it’s the same product, that would kind of put the onus of failure on Costco US.

Note, from what I gather Costco Canada has higher audiological standards and are generally pulling Costco US along with them rather than vice versa.

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@jeffrey: What hockey team he played with, this guy?

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I dunno, but seem to recall he was a punisher/defenseman.

WH

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@WhiteHat: Yes. A fantastic stick-handler, but with what team?

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The Capitols…and here are the extra letters needed to post

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My wife asked me why I was laughing while reading this thread! :rofl: :see_no_evil: :+1:

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Thread? What thread? :smiley:

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