My Phonak M90 purchase from eBay

Hearing Aids
#110

I don’t see why it seems to upset some members here that others are willing to buy from Ebay.

For a pair of M90s my audiologist is quoting around £3,000. I have known my current audiologist for a long time and I know that he will provide great service and unlimited support.

If I look on Ebay UK then I can see used M90’s being sold for £1,150. The seller has good feedback and seems to sell quite a few aids but makes it clear that while there is a 14 day return option there is no manufacturers warranty. With the Ebay option you would then need to find your own audiologist to program them, use REM testing, supply the right side domes, etc. I guess that you would spend a few hundred for a reasonable service to cover you for the life of the aids.

To me, there is nothing wrong with buying an expensive item from Ebay without a guarantee - as long as you feel that the reduced price compensates you for the increased risk and you are willing and able to bear that risk (cost) if it breaks e.g. pay for a repair or simply throw it away and replace it.

It is up to each individual to make their own decision on which route to go down. The cheaper option has more risk but saves you around 50%.

If you are the kind of person who is risk averse and would be kept awake at night by the worry of owning aids that could break outside of guarantee - then simply don’t go down the Ebay route. If you are more savings focussed and willing to take a risk then go down the Ebay route.

Personally, I will go down the route of using my existing audiologist as he has provided me with great service over the years and the extra cost is not a significant issue to me. However, I would not negatively judge someone who chose to go for the Ebay option.

7 Likes
#111

100% agree with you, gadgetman.

I have bought a pair of Phonak M90s online from an established British business (that trades on eBay and has its own separate website) for $2600.I now have an all-in $150/year service agreement with my local audiologist which includes clinic visits, cleaning, consumables, REM and retuning. My home insurance covers loss and damage. The Phonaks have a year’s international warranty and 2 years UK warranty. But I have spent several evenings researching what I need in order to be more confident that I am making the right decision. This forum helped. A lot.

I think there are elements of buying online that make it a challenge if you are relatively inexperienced. Reading this thread would give people a heads up on what to look for but a lot of the same sense that one would use to buy any item over $1k can be employed here.

I see the process of hearing aid purchase as being classic unbundling. I don’t want a conversation with my audiologist about cost of hearing aids. I just want to talk about how I can make the most of my hearing and hardware. Very happy to pay separately for that advice. Experience tells me that a good audiologist/HA fitter can get so much more out of these devices.

For what its worth my tips for buying online, especially if importing:

  1. Does the selling platform (e.g. ebay) have a remedy if the purchase goes wrong? How confident do you feel about the business if it doesn’t have a reputation to maintain?
  2. Factor in the cost of an audiogram at some point. Some suppliers can program the aids before they send them. In other cases this is up to you to organize
  3. Factor in the cost of REM testing and re-tuning as either a service contract or per visit cost with a local audiologist.
  4. Check the warranty. Different manufacturers have different warranties in different regions.
  5. If you are importing from another country, check that you are not paying local sales taxes unnecessarily (That can happen automatically with eBay) and factor in import duty if relevant (in the US its 10%)
  6. When paying by credit card or PayPal. make sure you pay in the local currency, not your own. Your credit card company’s exchange rate may well be hundreds of dollars cheaper than that of PayPal.

I am sure there are more items in a comprehensive checklist. I offer these as a community gesture based on what I learned from the forum and my experiences. Hope this helps someone else.

#112

Wow!! $150 a year is great. I paid $350 for one appointment. The clinic I found in my area offers a three year full service for (I think) $1400 that I’ll consider later, but that’s no where near the deal you got.

The seller I bought from included duty fees in the free shipping, so that wasn’t a factor. However, eBay did charge me sales tax automatically, and I had to jump through some hoops to get that removed, but they finally credited it back to me.

#113

This is absolutely correct. My assistant used to pull her hair out at the “We pay 80% of the cost of the hearing aids to the allowable amount after deductible and out-of-pocket” language used when she would call to verify coverage. It’s confusing, and I think it’s meant to be.

Had a really tough time with one patient. We called to verify 4 times (by 4 different staff members) and was told every time that the insurance would cover 100% of the patient’s hearing aids. This particular patient had a HF hearing loss and tinnitus that was so bad she had almost lost her child due to the stress and was suicidal. The hearing aids dropped the tinnitus perception down to a level she could manage. It was a beautiful thing to see.

Three weeks later we get the notice that the insurance coverage was denied. No real explanation. We called and called, gave reference numbers for each of the verification calls, etc. Each time we countered one of their reasons for denying coverage, they would magically come up with another reason. It was disgusting.

I went to the franchisee and plead the patient’s case. I said that if they wanted to repossess her hearing aids, they could do it themselves. I couldn’t do it. I thought doing so would be unethical.

Eventually, to the franchisee’s credit, they just let the patient have the aids and wrote it off as a loss.

Glad to hear that the state of Maine has put a mandate in place. A nice one, too. New Hampshire has a pretty good mandate. I’m pushing for one in Oklahoma.

3 Likes
#114

What a traumatic story. And what a great provider you are for sticking with your patient. I am glad she got some respite from her condition. Thanks for sharing this

1 Like
#115

Regarding the service fee, all the Audi is doing for their 150/year is offering a check in service and tune up. It isn’t the full service that would be offered if I had bought the devices in the US from that audi, I suspect. If the aids break after 1 year I have to ship them back to the UK. I don’t anticipate getting a loaner in the way I might if I were a fully fledged customer.
Maybe you could discuss what is in the $1400/3 year agreement and, dare I say it, unbundle it! You may find they’ve included insurance etc.

#116

If you actually bought from ebay you’d know that everything has a 30 day guarantee now. As long as you take the pair to your audi to get checked and programmed / tuned within that time, you have no risk. I’ve bought several pairs on ebay over the years including my $600 pair of Livio 2400s, and only once had a problem. I’ve saved thousand$!

2 Likes
#117

daali, is there an online description of the noah wireless link and the Phonak Target 6.x application and how to use them with Phonak Audeo Marvel? Do they come with a user manual?

#118

OK so how does one “save” their current settings before embarking upon an illegal journey of self discovery in the world of DIY with Target?? And how do you reload that saved copy if upon your journey you happen to screw up? Inquiring minds want to know…:slight_smile:
Thanks…

#119

I just PM’d you. Click your profile circle to read you PM’s. I also might be helpful if you post your Audiogram.

1 Like
#120

Got it…thanks. I have all the tools…just needed a quick answer on how to save the settings from my ha’s.

#121

When Target connects to your HAs, it asks whether to use the settings from the HAs or from the current session. You answer from the HAs. Then you close and save the session to the database (but not to the HAs, in case you accidentally changed something since you loaded from them). To restore at any later time, you can open that session (as long as you haven’t explicitly deleted it), connect to the HAs, answer from the current session (i.e., the old saved one), close and save the session to the HAs.

5 Likes
#122

Don’t just trust the local database on your Target setup to be a perfect fail-safe. What if you lose your setup?

I believe you can also EXPORT a saved session as a file you can store somewhere else, so that if you ever lose your installed software setup, you can do a fresh install, IMPORT your backed up file into a session, and restore your HA fitment.

Email that file to yourself, and you can always restore your HA fitment from any Target software setup.

1 Like
#123

Indeed. I export the client (I don’t think you can export a single session) after every session to a local directory that’s mirrored in the cloud.

1 Like
#124

Mandate to what? (News to me.)

Probably does not matter. My health insurance paid $32 for a $100 hearing test, and after that it’s all my money. (Unless the mandate goes further?)

#125

It requires $3,000 per ear to be covered by private health insurance. There are some exemptions for organizations that are self-insured, though.

https://legislature.maine.gov/legis/bills/bills_129th/billtexts/HP003901.asp

#126

I wouldn’t mind being a provider in Maine right about now!

#127

@hparsons Just to clarify a misconception (and granting that I haven’t been through the whole thread here)…Federal employees (a group to which I also belong) do not get 100% hearing aid insurance coverage on any plan I have looked into. All the plans available to me offer the same adults every 3 yrs @ $1250/ear with the subscriber paying the delta. Coverage for under 26 year old dependents is different though.

#128

:heart_eyes_cat: :heart_eyes_cat: :heart_eyes_cat:

I am trying to visualize how this works to me. My coverage is State Employee, Retired, from a mid-Atlantic state, now over-rode by Medicare (with ex-job secondary) but I have been in Maine for a decade. The insurance works ($60k of pee-trouble this year), but sometimes needs a push. There may be very few from my old state now in Maine. The insurer may not know of this mandate. (Yes, there is an office which reads all the news, but it doesn’t trickle-down to claims agents.)

It is very darn interesting. I wrote $1400 of my own money last week of 2019, and at that I may be one of the less-poor folks around. I could now self-justify two $2500 aids if I could afford it; this Mandate says I can.

However the AARP article is dated October. My AuD didn’t know this news? To suggest I wait a bit? He could have more than doubled his billing. Him and the other AuD in town should be outside the WalMart shilling for business. And it would help; there are a lot of HoH folks here.

Thanks again.

1 Like
#129

This is my experience, too. BCBS Federal and GEHA both offer total of $2500 per set every 3 years like clockwork. My favorite insurances to work with.

1 Like