I know this is an older thread, but thought I’d follow up with what my experience has been.
First, my experiences with the M90’s I bought on eBay. I’ve been very satisfied with them. They were pretty much everything I wanted in a set of HAs. The app was slow to connect sometimes, and I’ve had a persistent problem with feedback on the left side (more on that in a bit), but overall I’ve been happy with them. Oh, I forgot, I very much DISLIKE the new wax guard system they have. I’ll touch on that in a bit too.
So now the overall experience of buying from eBay. I’m satisfied with what happened, and there were no major surprises. I got a set of state of the art HAs at a price I could afford. Yes, there were issues, and yes, I would have REALLY preferred to buy the normal way, but I got what I paid for, and was happy.
Probably the single biggest complaint I had was that the audiologist I used did not do remote sessions. I didn’t mind paying the fee for his services, but I hated taking half a day off work to do it, and the hassle of going out to his office. As I mentioned, I’ve had a persistent problem with feedback, and the cost and hassle led me to finally just accepting the issue, and working with them as best I could (turning them down they started feeding back).
There were other downsides, but I pretty much knew that was going to happen. I mentioned the feedback, and no remote sessions. Bummer. Also, I seem to be pretty clumsy with the newer Phonak “CeruShield”. I had trouble with them on both receivers, and had to have the audiologist pull them out. One couldn’t be fixed, so I had to buy a new receiver. Then about 7 or 8 months ago, one of the receivers broke as I was pulling it out of my ear. These things would have been covered had I bought a bundled package, but I still saved money over all. Plus, I simply did not have the money it would have taken at the time.
Then a couple of months ago, I ended up going underwater in the pool with my HAs in. 2 weeks later, the left one started giving me static. After a few days, it got so bad I quit wearing them. I understand this would have likely been covered had I purchased a bundled package. I took a chance, and missed out, some.
However, there’s a bright side for me. I work as a government contractor. That means that although I’m surrounded by workers that have government insurance plans, I (typically) do now. However, our contract was taken over by a Native Tribe owned company, and their employees get to participate in the Federal insurance program. (The fed insurance was mentioned a couple of times in this thread). What I didn’t know when I mentioned federal insurance programs earlier is that there are different policies (about 19 for my state), and they differ somewhat state to state. The new insurance I chose provides up to $2500 for hearing aids ($1250 per ear) once every five years. I was able to find a Phonak Audeo Paradise 90s for $1850 each, so I was able to trade up for a reasonable amount out of pocket. The company is in another state, but they remote support, and my fitting today went without a hitch.
Overall, I still feel the “eBay experience” was good for me. It gave me what I needed at the time at a price I could afford, and showed me the value of having a bundled package with an audiologist available as well.