I have purchased and returned 2 different brands of aids from Costco. With the last, the audiologist tried to fit me with useable aids with little to no success. She suggested that I consider pursuing cochlear implants.
Since that time, I feel that my hearing has improved though I suspect that a great deal of the perceived improvement is due to my ability to read lips.
My invalid wife is tended by a number of different nurses, all females.
I am capable of maintaining communication with them, relying on lip reading but believe that I can understand much of what they say.
I also use a captioning telephone but again I am able to understand much of what is being said.
Costco has changed manufacturers of the hearing aids they sell.
My question is, given the efforts made by their audiologist and Costco’s allowing me to return the aids I had purchased, has anyone returned aids multiple times and do the Hearing Tracker members believe that Costco would balk at allowing me to try another time?
Costco HA departments have limited products and skills. They can handle the mainstream of the market, but not the really tough cases…which yours may be?
The other thing is, they will end memberships of people who they believe are gaming their generous return policies, and here I am not thinking just hearing aids. I am thinking about general purchase and return patterns. Understand that they know everything that you’ve ever bought. And returned. Store managers have great latitude in ending members who they feel aren’t dealing with them in good faith, and there is very little recourse for the terminated member.
I am a long time Costco HA customer, having purchased at least five pairs from them. I bought new HAs from them a couple of months ago. One of the questions on their standard questionnaire, which made my antenna wiggle, was… “Have you returned HAs in the past?”. I don’t ever remember that sort of question in the past and I thought it was curious.
You have a history with their HA department. Why not just talk to whomever is in charge, explain your present situation, see what they think? I guess that I wouldn’t be overly optimistic, given that you’ve already had them tell you that you may be a candidate for cochlear implants - it might be a case of two strikes and you’re out, and you’ve had your two strikes. But perhaps they think that they can fit you, if you have something new in your situation and if they sense that you are acting in good faith. Were it me, I would have a conversation with the person in charge of the department, and perhaps the store manager, and see where it goes. Can’t hurt.
I would encourage you to get the cochlear implant evaluation. You’ll have a lot more information then.
Do you know what your word understanding scores are?
It sure sounds like Costco is trying to help you. My experience with them is they were very capable of dealing with severe/profound hearing losses but yours may be more with complications beyond severe/profound.
A cochlear evaluation will test for these possible complications that you won’t get at an audiologist appointment. The evaluation will educate you about your hearing loss and give you information to move forward.
Good luck with this.
It depends on the particular Costco store. I have a history of purchasing one Costco aid several years ago and keeping it. Then recently I tried out one aid and returned it. They would not let me try out another brand (KS10). I went to another Costco, where they let me try the KS10. I kept it. Their skills vary, fitter to fitter and store to store. You may be beyond most Costco fitter’s skills.
Sounds like they are just being honest with you.