So Dr. Cliff says he just didn’t know what he didn’t know when he first began following Costco and making recommendations online. OK. But no great revelations ensued.
He states that 50% of his new clients are disgruntled Costco users. That could be for a lot of reasons, none of them particularly meaningful. Maybe due to his visibility and past Costco endorsements on Youtube? Maybe his office was next door to a Costco (not saying this is the case but it IS true of one audiologist I know of and he loves walk in traffic from unhappy Costco peeps)? Maybe because Costco is possibly the largest dispenser of prescription hearing aids in his metro if not the country? Who knows? As he acknowledges, no one has perfect outcomes and it is likely these people did, in fact, have more complex fitting requirements.
However, I don’t accept that any private dispenser/audiologist-supported venue is de facto superior to Costco. Concierge service in and of itself is not a recommendation for or against.
He basically says he feels betrayed by the KS10 battery issue. Well, they are good hearing aids. He wasn’t wrong about that. The charging issue may be firmware related from what I can tell, and it is not unique to KS10s. My new, first pair of Widex Moment Sheers had the exact same issue. One aid wouldn’t charge properly, would drain in a matter of hours, blah blah. But he intimates that it may have been substandard batteries or lower quality standards in their manufacture compared to the Phonak equivalents he services in his practice. How, even if true, is this Costco’s fault? They didn’t spec the battery, they don’t write the firmware. Costco did attempt to address the issue. KS10’s appear to be rebranded Phonak, but this does not mean they are identical, they may even be different business units, like Toyota and Lexus. And even if Costco simply decided to abandon the Kirkland branded prescription HA portion of their business for other reasons, including the fact that they might make more money on the OTC and other prescription brands, I still don’t see how that is a personal betrayal or warrants a black box warning.
His primary “advice” to Costco was “be more like me,” which is NOT their model at all 
So this was a thinly veiled infomercial for his own services.
The whole OTC thing is what is likely to eat into trad audiologist profit margins, and I gather that Costco is doing both. This may sound cynical, but what I really think Dr. Cliff regrets, is being so transparent in representing Costco as an alternative to his own business model in the first place. If I were one of his affiliates, I would think why the heck are you promoting Costco when I am paying fees (I assume) for your endorsement?? I think there is still a place for people with trad audiologist business models, but perhaps won’t be as profitable as in the past. In the meantime he needs those affiliate and manufacturing relationships, probably more than ever. I really cringed to see Joe Namath flogging MDHearing, and then I thought, if it puts more people on the path to better hearing, so be it.
Having said this, I personally got a lot of information on his channel when first researching alternatives for my husband and for myself. His channel, Hearing Tracker, and this forum, (not necessarily in that order) were my go to resources. So I appreciate his contributions to the industry and HA users, and don’t doubt his overall sincerity. But he is going to have to do a lot better than say, oops, don’t use Costco: Dial up my provider network, instead.