POLL: Hearing Aid Perceived Value

Widex Evokes 440, cost £3500 to include 4 year aftercare package.

Value to me:priceless

Bought my son the F2s, I have the customs. Feels like real hearing, love music, parties, street sound, everything really. Always comfortable sound and a vast range of ways to tailor the sound to your preference. I’ve had it said a few times, but when you have Widex set up correctly, you’ll never go back to anything else.

Four years is not bad. I love the features and think custom earplugs are best.

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Hi Allan,
It looks like you’ve uploaded your audiogram! Looks like we both have the common “ski slope” loss.

Hi Gary,
Yes I asked for it when I visited the audio. Typical high frequency loss! Up to 90% now and everything is very noisy again. The car indicators go tick tock now instead of tock tock.

I paid $3500 after help from insurance. I bought Signia Pure 13BT

These are like value of gold to me. I hear pretty well with them. Bluetooth I gotta to iPhone, TV and my music is so very nice and helpful. They are ‘aids’ so one is not going o hear perfectly, but they sure make my life a little easier. I’m thankful each day for the technology and that I can afford them.

How well I know! I’m now at 100%. I was outside last night after dark and was blown away by the night sounds of tree frogs and insects! (central Georgia, USA) Who knew they made noises like that!

Phonak Marvel M90-13s +TV connector 2 = £2900 for the pair (approximately 3653 USD) TV connector was a freebie or promotional extra from Boots UK… value to me at the very least double that for the sheer amount of pleasure in being able to phone someone on my iPhone and hear almost exactly what they are saying, tis as good as I used to hear on the old landlines (if not better?) prior to my loss around 30 years ago. Cheers Kev;-)

  1. US$2400 for Costco Resound Fortes
  2. US$8000 … what I paid for a pair of Oticon Agil Pros that I HATED
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Neat idea for a poll. It would be interesting, too, if folks updated their posts to indicate brand/model and relative scale in model line.

I got ReSound Quattro’s 9 61’s (rechargeable) through TruHearing.com, ReSound’s premium model

  1. Cost to me $2,600 (after insurance and paying $175 more for the charger as a “required accessory(!).” So $4,600 total cost, including $2K insurance.

  2. Perceived value, >= $2,600 paid, with disclaimers below.

I rate the user value of just about any premium hearing aid as excellent but when you can get a top-of-the-line iPhone or Android phone for $1,000 or so, one does wish, audiology services aside, that the HA hardware would cost less as, unfortunately, probably due to economies of scale and development/manufacturing setup costs that have to be paid off, HA’s are relatively overpriced compared to the tech that we get and take for granted in our smartphones and our other computing devices. Most other devices we don’t buy with a big upfront fee, 3 years of service included “free,” or whatever. Perhaps the bundling is necessary so that people who need very few follow-up visits can effectively help cover the costs of people who need or like many follow-up visits to get things just the way they want their HA’s to be. Thus, I like the TruHearing model, whereas if you need a bunch of follow-up visits beyond the included three follow-ups, you pay for them one-by-one as needed (given a $65/visit estimate but my audi usually charges closer to $45/15 minute visit). And if you don’t need the follow-ups, you’re not paying a lot in advance for service you’ll never use. I could have a lot of follow-up visits before I reached the premium retail price of ReSound Quattro’s.

Since I can get by reasonably well without my HA’s with decent low-frequency hearing that undoubtedly affects my perception of how much value my HA’s, lovely though they are, add to my life. :smiley:

  1. $3000

  2. Can’t put a price on it, (what price hearing birdsong or your children playing?). Worth what I paid although I can’t help but think we are overcharged for the technology when you consider a high powered PC is $1500.

  1. About $6,500.
  2. This question is poorly framed. It depends completely on how bad your hearing is and how wealthy you are. A better version would be, “What % of your net worth would you give up for hearing aids if your only other option is to live without hearing aids?” Of course this is unpleasant to think about and hard to answer. For me, I guess about 10-20%. I’m not wealthy, but I own a home in California, so that’s big $.
  1. $5,600 and a lot of frustration for my current aids.
  2. Priceless, but I feel lucky to have been able to pay for aids the last fifty years or so. Not everyone is so fortunate. The system is broken, and I don’t know what the fix is.
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Costco is a good start if you have reasonable access to one. However, I am having my share of frustration with the aids I got there. Seems like no matter how good the service and devices are, they take a lot of trial and error set ups to make them work. I’m currently on the error part of the cycle!

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1: $3000 net of insurance discounts (50%)

2: $1700, but increasing - mild/moderate hearing loss and new user, after acclimating the value proposition is improving for me most likely as I view it as an enhancement. More of a “want” than a “need” currently. Relative to other technology purchases, just not that much bang for the buck, but I miss my “ears” when they are not in these days.

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I was surprised at how much more energy I had once I got used to wearing hearing aids (30 years ago!). Straining to hear is hard work. How do you put a value on that?

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Used Phonak Bolero V70M $257.00
ICube ll wireless interface. $175.00
Custom earmolds $85.00
Like new Pilotone ll remote $35.00
Gray market Target Software $40.00

Total investment including everything to self program $592.00

Value at least $592.00. When you only pay $257.00 for what would otherwise be very expensive hearing aids, wear them all day everyday, and even forget they are in your ears until taking them out at night, it’s easy to meet or exceed your expectations.

Also picked up a pair of Phonak Bolero Q30 P locally off Craigslist for $125.00, which only took a few minutes to program and are in my desk drawer as backups.

I am a happy camper. :+1::+1:

I too have been using Zenni optical for years with great success and like being able to play around with my optical prescriptions just like self-programming hearing aids. Have I detected a pattern there?