I just ordered and received OPN’s from Buyhear. Before placing this order I got many quotes and it’s interesting to see how huge the price range for these can be. First a little background if you don’t mind:
I’ve been wearing HA’s for ~25 years. I was fitted by three different audiologists over this time in three different cities. The process was always the same - first see an ENT and get evaluated. Conclusion - always - yes you have a hearing loss with no specific medical condition. Result - you need hearing aids. So I would see an audiologist and typically get steered toward the latest tech whatever it is or was. Up until these OPN’s I have always been wearing custom fit CIC’s. Advantage - less exposure to wind, rain, and getting accidentally knocked off, plus completely invisible and I could wear any kind of headphone I pleased. My last fitting was the same as the others - I was steered toward these very new fangled deep in the canal Starkey CIC’s which required a tricky custom fitting (something we never got 100% correct but with some great time & effort it worked adequately). I was told the price was $7K and seven years ago there was no negotiation or shopping around that I was aware of. I’m pretty sure my prior aids five years even earlier were ~$6k so this didn’t seem so outrageous. Fast forward to this summer… my old Starkeys are long out of warranty and in need of repair. I had recently moved yet again to a faraway island, but happened to be back in my old town on a visit, and stumbled onto news of the Oticon OPN, and my audio had a pair of demos handy. I immediately realized these were vastly superior to my old aids and solved many if not most of the issues I had with RICs (for one the OPN’s seem oblivious to wind noise and I happen to live in very windy places). So after a few days I was very enthused and asked my audio friend what’s the price? I was told that normally they are $7.5K, however if I wished to purchase that very moment, they would give me a deal and make it $7k. It was a measure of my desperation that I seriously considered this. But I returned to my island and did some research, stumbling onto this sight and this thread in the process. Thank you very much. For the first time ever I feel like we the HA consumers now have some price transparency (I feel a bit like the guys in “The Big Short”, discovering what their CDO’s are really worth).
There are three audio options where I live. One is Costco but they don’t sell Oticons. I called the only independent audio and was quoted $6.8K for the OPN’s (and they were very enthusiastic about them). Next I called a medical group with an ENT/Audio dept and yes they also sell Oticons and their price? $5.4K. They were also very enthusiastic. Then I emails HCS (hearing care solutions) and unfortunately they have no contracted audio on the island or anywhere close. But their price was $4.4k. And finally there is the buyhear price, which everyone should know already. So I could have payed as much as $7.5K for these, or as little as $3.8K. How can such price disparity be possible? Because audiologists rely on the fact that most of us most of the time have no clue what these should cost, and these are medical devices that we desperately need to live our lives in a meaningful manner, so they have most of us over a proverbial barrel. IMO Costco and Buyhear are simply bringing some price sanity to this insanity.
And for me personally, I have no concerns buying online, as I do so many things already (on an island it’s often your only choice). My prior HA’s were serviced by an audio 3000 miles away anyway, so I figure dealing with buyhear can be no worse and is likely to be better - after all working with remote customers is they’re entire and only business model.
As for what HA’s should cost - I read in an earlier post that in Sweden OPN’s cost around $2K and there was some surprise a profit could be made at a such a price. So I’m an engineer, both electrical and a software developer and I formerly worked for a giant semiconductor manufacturer. And if you know how chips are made you know that the first one costs $10 million to make and the next 10 million chips cost 10cts each to make. I believe HA’s somewhat follow this model, so say the first OPN cost $10 mil to make, the next million (or how many they plan to manufacture) cost ~$50 to make. Do the math and you can see what the profit margin is. Besides the main chip in these, all the other parts are off the shelf standard commodity componentry. Further, consider some of the “hearables” and bluetooth earpods recently announced. For instance the HearOne https://hereplus.me/ will retail for $299 a pair. Each of these has three directional microphones, are rechargeable, communicate between each device, support BLE streaming to any bluetooth device, have 4G of memory so music (or custom apps) and can stored and run entirely inside the earpod, and can be programmed to cancel or isolate noises including voices and music. While these are not marketed as hearing aids, I can already see the potential that these will work for many as aids or, especially when combined with apps and that’s a key part of this - like an iPhone these can run custom apps as they have a pretty sophisticated processor + memory in each. All that for $299. I suspect we are going to continue to see some price erosion in the HA market as devices like this start to compete with “real” HA’s. You’ll soon be able to buy devices like these online and at box stores like Walmart. Plus I wouldn’t be surprised to see Walmart or other big box stores add an in house audiologist to compete with Costco. IOW there is going to be downward pressure on prices and we the HA consumer should be happy. And it’s about time.
PS - one more thought. I suspect people like me are going to consider selling or trading in our aids which are not custom fitted, such as a RIC OPN, and getting the latest bells every 2 years, instead of waiting 6 or 7 years as I have been doing. More like how we treat smartphones today. If a used/refurbished OPN that was still in warranty was available for say $1.5K right now, that would seem like a decent price for some, yes? Up until now I never considered buying or selling used, but the more I think about it, the more it makes a lot of sense. Especially when we can program our aids ourselves.
