I remember fondly simpler times when phone calls and hearing didn’t involve such complicated technology.
As a kid. the phone rang and we answered it.
Btw WILD HORSES couldn’t force me to do the nightly Uninstall / Install thing. Imo would be crazy making
Ah yes … even I - born with a hearing loss altho NOTHING like what it’s bottomed out to now! - recall picking up the phone as a kid. However! My dear dad had profound hearing loss (so, likely I inherited mine from him), and as soon as they came out we had wall mount & desktop phones with a VOLUME control. What a novel thought? An appliance for critical use that actually has a volume control to increase (or maybe decrease) as needed. LOL. Like selling an auto that actually lets the steering wheel rotate LEFT or RIGHT.
I totally agree with you about the install/uninstall boondoggle. Yes, it can be done every day and take no more than 5 min max, but I just balk at having ME, the Phonak paying customer, do all that tiddlywink when it is THEIR product that is so rigid.
What if we had to do a similar routine every day to get our aids talking to each other or the phone? I just don’t get how they make things difficult and a cludge. Just CHARGE ME THE MONEY. Make one stick work on both pairs of aids. Ah, I’m preaching to the choir here…
The posted Phonak Guide is from the Phonak Pro website and is labled BTB (business to business) , so it seems that Phonak released this info guide only for their business partners and normaly the audis doing the setup for the receivers in the customers HAs when they buy an Roger device.
The information is hidden from the normal folks and they should get the service from their audis.
And i this may also explain that Phonak’s end user support is not aware of this stuff and only direct you to the normal Roger end user guide.
YOU SAID IT!!! That is exactly the Phonak strategy here. I’m no DIYer, and actually enjoy getting in to see my audi, but I feel that Phonak hides critical info from us in the interest of making a buck.
I just hope they don’t adopt the revenue model of charging us for minutes used with our aids - cuz I can see the day when the aids require a phone app that keeps track of usage (and location and all the other data we’d rather not share with strangers). Then we’d need to set up a credit card account for monthly billing.
Scary.
Interesting. Which your comments are somewhat associated withy long-running plea, i. e. begging for knowledge from the tree of forbidden truth WHAT is A RECEIVER?? From the beginning of my attempts to understand the how-to’s etc with my Roger Direct IN the directions specified holding the receiver near to or touching the R.D. IN. Reading Directions suddenly they specify RECEIVER but they never stated or defined , what a Receiver is.
Now if the company valued transparency they would have stated that it’s not an individual object but is an object contained WITHIN a other. Why did they confuse things with sudden appearance of RECEIVER.
Maybe what it truly is: a SHELL GAME used by charlatans, hucksters and various & sundry other purveyors of Snake Oil. The challenge is to keep track of UNDER WHICH SHELL is the Receiver. Over here or over there? First we name it this and then we switch to that.
BAH HUMBUG is my take on the whole lot of them.
Phonak playing mind games with people who have collectively made them multi billion or trillionaires.
Manufactured terms to confuse and deceive.
‘Never give a sucker an even break’ is probably emblazoned on all intra-company corporate messaging and mail.
I’m going to be controversial and possibly inflammatory so anyone feel free to skip my comment
They don’t want users to do it on their own; the whole user-audiologist codependency is financially beneficial for them. It’s a whole ecosystem of hucksterism on multiple levels, starting with prices.
Some of their training materials are quite easily accessible and it’s quite clear that their objective is to push as many devices to as many users for as much and as quickly as possible. Which should surprise no-one since it’s a for-profit company.
You’re quite right. Their strategy isn’t just maintaining market share, it’s gaining market share.
They don’t want an ebay market, they want full price payments.
They make Marvel/Paradise/Lumity “Roger Direct”! This sounds fantastic, but it really isn’t, as Roger devices won’t automatically connect, unless you buy an iN product with “Roger Receivers included”. Oh wow, that costs a fortune. On previous Phonak HAs that needed shoes and Roger X’s physically attached, and they work just fine, but just a little bulky.
Lets face it, the Roger Receivers (aka Roger Licences), are now purely software, and could have come pre-installed, but they chose not to do that. Go figure.
Peter
Apparently the business side of the house wanted this engineering change to be revenue-neutral.
Shamefully - I fear it is exactly as you said. It all starts with the closely guarded info-babble in response to consumer query: HOW MUCH DOES IT COST.
Yeah, it’s a clear giveaway in any field. Hidden cost is an obvious cover to price gouging.
And the choir, I believe, agrees with you.
Was there ever a diagnosis for your dear dad’s hearing loss (was he once able to hear and lost it or was it always lost). Genetics is moving forward in leaps and bounds. I am, SADLY, a carrier, for x-linked juvenile retinoschisis , and even sadder still, my second son is afflicted with it. But in the earlier days when my cousin was first in the family to be diagnosed, little if anything was known about it. But now they have done a lot with genetic studies and discovered they how it is passed on by and to-whom. They have done testing on various drugs via eyedrops to improve the outlook and there is ongoing investigation involving gene transplants.
My cousin who was originally diagnosed is now 67 years old but in his lifetime much has been learned. But always the disease becomes apparent at a very young age, as in my cousin and my son, about 7 years old (the news heartbreaking). Meanwhile, carrier females are still unknowingly passing it on to their children.
So I’m wondering if there isn’t some similar studies for your father and yourself and family?
BINGO! (and 20 more characters so I can post this succinct reply which NAILS it!)
No studies done on my dad - born in 1925, he was probably way before his time in the genetic connections work. But! His own dad was as deaf as he and me, LOL! We all have bad BAD sensorineural hearing loss. From what ancestor at the beginning of tiime I’ll never know. Bummer I got the gene, but there you are! If I ever thought I was adopted, my own ears tell the story.
I have Phonak Lumity 90-Rs paired to a Roger On iN and a pair of Roger Table Mic II iNs. (The three microphones were provided by my employer as part of my ADA accommodations. I’d never be able to afford them! Holy smokes; they are expensive!) My audi paired them while on the phone with someone at Phonak. No physical receivers were ever installed into my HAs. I know this because I saw the contents of the box the microphones came in. There was some sort of software program installed remotely, however, that allowed for them to be paired. This was a surprise to both me and my audi. Hope that sheds some light on the subject!
@user62 What I have learned is that keeping up with technology is a real challenge in which I regularly fall further behind. The other very concerning challenge is a wakeup call to the growing prevalence of all sorts of slippery companies: purveyors of medically necessary (often ESSENTIAL) but very pricey items for which they are able to price gouge consumers. If that’s not illegal it ought to be.
We all can agree that Roger devices are expensive. Many would say too expensive. But the real question is, are they worth it? For me, the answer is clearly yes. My increased productivity, due to using Roger devices, allowed me to immediately recover the cost. How much is hearing better worth?
You only need 1 x Roger iN device for your one pair of Phonak L90.
All other Roger Mic do not need to be the iN.
You now have excess licenses.
I have M70 and P70.
I have 1 x Roger On iN and 1 x Roger Table Mic II iN and 2 x Roger Table Mic II.
I also had 1 x Select (not iN) until recently.
All work with my M70 and P70.
The licenses went into my M70 from my On iN and the licenses went in to my P70 from my Table Mic iN.
All Microphones now interchange between HAs.
I also now have excess licenses. I was able to purchase 2 IN devices at a better price than the non IN. Also, when I sent my Select to Phonak for repair they sent me a new one. So, I’m all set for when I get new aids and will probably gift the others to friends.
Oh my. If it’s controversial ENOUGH maybe we should check our mailboxes for an invitation to be guests on the OPRAH show. Though I confess I rarely watch TV. IS Oprah still ON?