good point too BTW 
Yes!
I am surprised how many people here say no, or find it too fiddly. One of the few POSITIVE things I get out of my loss is the telecoil! I use mine in manual mode, and turn off any of the features that automatically turn it on or sense the magnet. When I want the telecoil on, I have to manually switch to that program. I also exclusively use it with the mic completely off.
This lets me hear music as clear as day regardless of environmental sound… To me, there is nothing better than flying down a dirt path on my bike or motorcycle even, and everything is completely muted except for my music… driving in a car on the freeway, in a noisy room, on the bus, etc… its like the ultimate headphones. Also, another benefit is (I have a profound loss) I can BLAST music and nobody else can hear it. Whereas with traditional headphones I really have to crank them up and even at full level they generally aren’t loud enough. (PS- I usually use a loop)
Also, this may be geeky, but friends of mine consider it a superpower. I’ve had people ask me to use my telecoil to determine if a device is on, or if a wire is electrically hot, as I can usually lean in and pick up the interference generated. Sometimes, but rarely does the interference be a problem. Sometimes on planes I do have to lean a specific way to avoid too much interference, or I’ve noticed near the back of a bus the motor generates a lot of interference as well, but in most situations, especially when away from motors or big industrial places this is not an issue.
-Plus, once I happened to be walking down a wash during a downpour, and instead of just turning off my aids I just swapped to telecoil to mute the mic and enjoy the silence, and a lightning bolt struck very close nearby. I’ll never forget how it sounded, and still think about it today. No crack, no thunder, just a vibrato hum/sizzle of pure, raw energy! I am one of probably very few people who have heard lightning only from its pure electromagnetic dicharge and no actual sound/waves. How cool is that?!
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old thread but applies to me…
I was going to get fitted with the 312 model, but asked specifically for the 13T…just like the OP (dondotashe)!
Just negligibly larger aids with significantly more battery
Also, at the time I didn’t know much about T-coil, but knew that our church has an FM system and assumed that it might also work with t-coil…maybe other places too. Saw a youtube video about looped rooms and I was sold (I think it was dr cliff)
So far I have found no place that was looped.
I have not used it for it’s original purpose (old landline phones)
I bought a neck loop to try plugging into my computer’s phone jack in place of headphones… but I get too much static in my “chair” at home.
I bought my own FM receiver that uses a neckloop. Used it only a few times so far at church, but I love it for that! I bring it every time but only need to use it when we have a foreign priest with heavily accented broken english.
i keep hoping to find a service booth, ticket counter, theater, etc…with a room or area loop.
Regardless, I’m happy to have it!
I find the t-coil most useful using a standard landline telephone. As a hearing aid wearer for many years, I still prefer a landline phone over a cell phone if its going to be a lengthy call. For me, the voice quality is still better than a cell phone.
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Interesting take on telecoils: Stop Trash-Talking Telecoils! – Gael Hannan – Better Hearing Consumer
Quote:
I don’t know how to say this more clearly: Telecoils in my hearing aids have made my life better .
Better, happier, easier, and more connected. And I’m not the only one – there are gazillions of us. Because of this positive experience, it’s frustrating for us – the hearing loss advocates and international organizations – to hear that audiologists are advising against telecoils, saying they’re ‘old technology’ and here, try this newest, greatest thing!
Without telecoils, I wouldn’t have been able to use the phone as well as I have for the past 20 years. I still use it to talk on the phone, both cell and landline, daily.
Without telecoils, I would continue jostling for space at the front of a group or crowd, to sit in the front row so that I could better see and lipread the speaker. Now I can stand at the back of a crowded hall – like I recently did at the national conventions of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association and the Hearing Loss Association of America. In plenary sessions and smaller workshops, the speakers’ voices flowed beautifully into my devices. (Bluetooth can’t do that – the poor speaker would have 100 transmitters handing around her neck or pinned to his clothes.)
Without telecoils, I wouldn’t have been able to use audio guides in museums, art galleries, boat tours and other facilities around the world that care about inclusion for people with hearing loss. I would have had to rely on imperfect relay by the Hearing Husband or get by just with the visual information.
I’ve used telecoils in other looped environments such as at church, at the bank, and watching TV. When I’m presenting or performing, in addition to the audience area being looped, I ask for the stage area to be looped as well, because it lets me hear myself better (always a good thing for the presenter).
Still, many audiologists say that telecoils are ‘old’ technology, as if discoveries come with a “Use By” date when they are suddenly no longer useful. I mean, hey! What about the wheel? It’s a very old invention – and to this day, wheels still make our world go ’round. Like the song says: big wheel keep on turnin’ ! Penicillin and insulin were invented in the 1920’s and they are still saving lives. So, while telecoils are decades-old, they still provide crucial and exquisite access to communication.
Hearing care professionals need to stop trash-talking telecoils, because people with hearing loss around the world love them! We love how switching our devices to the telecoil mode connects us to other people. And it’s not an ‘either-or’ situation. We also love what Bluetooth does for us when we can use it. We adore the improvements in speech-to-text technology. We are passionate about captioning.
We want it all and today we can have it all – but only if hearing care professionals put client needs first and look at our overall, everyday hearing requirements. And if they are still not convinced – simply because we say so – we strongly recommend they attend a consumer hearing loss event. There, they can see for themselves the look on the face of a person with hearing loss when they use telecoils for the first time in a workshop or when someone sings the national anthem. That look of wonder is worth a CEU (Continuing Education Credit).
If you’re a person whose hearing care professional tries to talk you out of a telecoil, be polite but firm: Give. Me. A. Telecoil! And if that doesn’t work, find a more person-centered care clinic.
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Agree with above but I happen to regularly attend medical and educational conferences where telecoil is standard. Other than those venues I have found very few places that are looped. However I believe that the new Bluetooth, whenever it arrives, Will probably replace telecoil.
i was surprised…recent trip to both NYC and Washington DC visiting museums and various visitor centers, I found zero places to use my t-coil.
Also visited my parents, who have the only old fashioned phone I know of and couldn’t tell if my t-coil even worked with it. The dial tone was so loud coming out of the earpiece that I couldn’t tell if the aids were picking it up…and yes I switched to t-coil mode.
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Some think of a telecoil as being useful only in a venue that is looped. It’s true that not many places are looped in most states. (If you’e in MI or WI, you’re in luck. Those states are well looped.) But loops are of tremendous value in all states because many places provide assistive listening devices: theaters, museum docent guides or even recorded guides, tour guides. If they provide ear buds, or people bring their own, you should bring your neck loop. After all, with ear buds you don’t get the amplification you need that’s programmed into your hearing aids. Plug the neck loop in the listening device instead of the ear buds, and you will be able to understand the speaker as well as can with your hearing aids and a person sitting next to you, with all background noise eliminated.
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Haven’t had HAs with telecoil or seen the technology around here in Europe since I used this over fifty years ago…
I use t-coils at our church for every service. I am looking for a neck loop at this time.
When I am with a tour group, they often use a system where the tour leader has a microphone and transmitter and each guest has a receiver and earbuds (or sometimes a speaker that clips over the ear.) For a trip I took last month, I bought a neck loop and enabled the T-coil program on my aids. It worked great - the sound was better than I get through the cheap earbud/speaker they hand out.
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Good tip! Yes, it is a shame this stone-age technology (dating from the 1940s…) is not more widely (systematically) deployed, as it can cover far larger areas than Bluetooth and doesn’t require 1:1 connectivity. Reviews say it is used more in Europe than the US, but I don’t see much of this here.
The UK, and I believe the EU (EN 17210 inclusive requirements for public spaces across Europe, 2021) makes it mandatory to implement hearing loops in public spaces, so hopefully things will improve.
As cvkemp notes, this is extremely useful in churches, which tend to be large and where acoustics appear to be rather designed to encourage monastic silence. I liked the technology a lot when I last used it as a kid.
Bluetooth is a relatively short-distance connector–about 30 feet, while telecoil with a hearing loop can connect in a VERY large space–big auditorium etc.
BTW–the new Jabra Enhance Pro’s LACK the telecoil, BUT the relevant external microphone–the Multi-Mic–DOES include a telecoil, so if you have a Multi-Mic, you have a telecoil available!
I did the same thing on a guided tour/trip to Europe. I heard much better than anyone else on the tour, and was able to stand at the back of the group. Heard perfectly!
I have had a telecoil for many years - I think I have only used it in a public place once or twice in that time.
HOWEVER, I use it all the time when using over ear headphones - they have magnetic speaker coils and work really well with telecoil. It prevents uncontrollable feedback when the ears are cupped by the headphones and leads to greatly enhanced music listening, especially when I am recording or mixing music productions - I hope a telecoil option will continue for many years.
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I was in Victoria station in London standing at the ticket window and realized there was the loop symbol. The clerk uses a mic anyway and I changed my program to the telecoil and there it was. Accents and all were, as always, the challenge but it worked.
Way out here on the west coast of Canada we have a ferry system that has a cafeteria and I noticed the loop symbol there too and it worked.
So they’re around. Regardless of how old they are they still work wonderfully in their discrete way rather then some big ugly bulky thing. And we still have the wheel don’t we. That’s been around for a couple few years. 
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I recently stayed in the hotel in Victoria Station and picked up the announcements when I adjusted my HAs to better hear the TV.
I use telecoil extensively because I attend a lot of international conferences where it is used. Also tours and museums.
I got the telecoil option when I got my “new” hearing aids, some 3 or 4 years ago, Phonak Marvel 13T, something like that. I had read about churches, theaters, and air ports being looped, and that sounded good to me. Sadly, I’ve yet to go to a church, theater, or airport that is looped.
However, I don’t regret getting the telecoil option. A couple of years ago, I started looking into what our church could do for us folks with “mature” hearing. I discovered that you could get little receivers with neck loops that hooked into the telecoil. Boy, does that make a world of difference!
I was interested to read folks above talking about plugging neck loops into the little receivers that get handed out in museums and the like. Sounds like I need to take my church loop with me when I go out to such places.
I don’t need it for the phone because I have bluetooth pairing with my iPhone. I’ve yet to figure out how to “upgrade” our landline so that it would work with my telecoil. Something to do with little magnets I gather, but switching my HAs into TC mode isn’t trivial, the little button on my HAs is dodgy, and folks would have long hung up on me were I to try to use TC on my landline. Whatever, the majority of calls these days are from telemarketers, and I’ve no interest in talking to them.
Anyway, thanks Allo for the info on this thread. I agree that TC is a great option to have.
Wow, that’s a strong induction loop. How many floors up were you? I wonder where the actual loop of wire is located. I wonder how high up an induction loop can be picked up by telecoils? Interesting. I don’t remember hearing announcements.
I travel with my TV Connector. Works on planes and hotel tvs.
Many public libraries are looped, mainly in the ‘community room’ where meetings are held. Sometimes you have to speak to the person in charge to get the loop “turned on”–that is, if there’s a sound system–as there is (sadly) so little usage of it. I like to ask for it, just to keep them on their toes.