My extreme apologies @Jeffrey I am about to rant… Of course its rotten, and rotten to the core… And anyone saying otherwise is perhaps deluding themselves, the whole hearing aid system stinks, they could easily sell top tier aids for $200 a pair, and still make a decent profit… The problem is too many fingers in the pie, bleeding the end user dry, all this crap about different tiers of aids is pure B/S, they are the ones whom are purposefully downgrading the aids to eek out a more substantial profit, by forcing users into buying better features, by buying a better tier of aid, because that’s what we are all after, better hearing…In each category of hearing aids, tier 1 or tier 4, its the same aid, we have the same chip, same software, same O/S, same battery, the manufacturers disable the features in the lower tier aids… FFS, if that’s not manipulation I don’t know what is, and its manipulation against disabled folks… Apologies again, rant over. By way of example, my wife is a retired Social Worker for the Deaf, she has a very mild hearing loss caused by Chemotherapy perhaps? But, she likes listening to Podcasts while she does her artwork, anyway she wanted a set of EarPods, but didn’t want the expensive apple version, so I thought I would pay £100 or so from Amazon, I got a set for £25,with absolutely excellent reviews, 40+ hours runtime allegedly, noise cancelling, Bluetooth 5.3, pickup mic for cell phone calls, the case can be charged up, as a backup charger on the go, she states the clarity is pristine, she asked for another set as back ups, the same ones, the price had dropped to £19.99, and for the price, unbelievable value! Now, I am acutely aware these ain’t hearing aids, but the components will not be too dissimilar, Amazon has made a profit, I assume the manufacturers make one, by bulk selling, so by my reckoning £50 tops per aid manufacturing costs, and that’s probably fairly conservative? As always YMMV… Cheers Kev