A ‘Demo’ here is a couple of weeks before you pay, to see if you get on with the aids or swap to another pair. After you’ve paid you get a 60 day refund period, that’s not a demo, that’s a completed sale, but with return potential if the customer is dissatisfied with their purchase.
Fully purchased aids that get bounced by the customer within the sixty days revert to the manufacturer as they aren’t in a saleable condition.
1 Like
And then what happens to them? Do they inspect and repackage as new? Sell them as ex demo? (I’ve never been offered ex demos, is that possible to request?) Disassemble and put the components into new cases to sell as new?
My audiologist took my credit card number but didn’t take any money, and I was able to try them for two weeks. If I wanted a longer trial, I had to pay in full. Has the audiologist paid the manufacturer anything at that stage?
I’m interested to know how returns work for the audiologist and the manufacturer. I took the first pair I trialled, but theoretically I could have worked my way through $20,000 worth of aids, then said I liked the first pair I tried 3 months ago. If I did that, would I end up with the actual pair I tried, or would they have been sent back by then? And is the audiologist out of pocket for any amount per rejected trial pair?
I’m also interested to know how many customers do that. Are there many who don’t end up taking the first pair, or any pair at all?
I’m speculating here based on returning a hearing aid accessory to Costco. It was not returned to the factory but they filled out special paperwork noting it was not for resale. I assume they were going to use it to demo to customers who were interested. It wouldn’t surprise me if some returned hearing aids don’t meet the same fate, perhaps explaining why they sometimes have demos and sometimes don’t. (I’m using demo to mean trying on for a short time while in store)
No, returned product is just written off. You can’t resell this product. It’s deemed a production loss, like a returned ITE.
I guess theoretically it coul be used as demo stock, but I wouldn’t want something with potential quality issues as a Demo for a new customer.
Really? A $10,000 pair of aids rejected by a client after a short trial just goes in the bin? Is the audiologist out of pocket at all for them? Do they actually get returned to manufacturer?
If this is how it works then the production cost must be very low, a few dollars, and the sale price must be mostly covering design costs, which aren’t lost if a pair is discarded.
Well, the low cost to produce nails it. Purchase price has no relationship to cost to produce. Software production cost are a different category but relates as a percentage to good sold. For returns, that can be looked at as zero.
Several years ago, the VA disclosed what they buy aids for. It was around $270 each which evidently gives a decent profit to the industry based on quantity sold. So the rest of it is business expense and controlled markets.
He may have, but they would re-imburse him once they were returned if it was within the manufacturer trial period. He would be out the cost of the associated services. Where I am, the government also funds some of the cost of hearing aids but reimbursement for that is months and months down the road, so we essentially just loan the hearing aid user $1000 for a few months until the government pays us back. 
Hearing aid prices largely cover R&D, not materials in the device. I mean, it’s the size of a quarter.
What’s VA? So assuming a bit of a markup and some admin costs, the manufacturer might be out of pocket a few hundred dollars per returned trial? I wonder how much that ends up adding to the purchase prices.
VA = Veterans Administration (US)
It is the largest provider of hearing aids in the US – about 20% of total.
I wonder why they “weren’t having it”. They can set it up in front of you. I think transparency is very important when it comes to selling hearing aids. In my opinion, a consumer should not be paying full price for hearing aids that were worn by someone else during a trial period. THEY ARE USED! Worn in someone else’s ear where dirt and sweat accumulate, where inside components may have been jarred or damaged. Doesn’t matter if hearing aid dispenser cleans them before giving them to someone else. Should I pay thousands of dollars for hearing aids that are used? They are already overpriced as it is. The only way consumers are going to know for sure if they are getting new aids is if they ask to have them unboxed in front of them. End of story.
Comparing hearing aids to new cars? Not the same. Test driven cars are not taken home by potential buyers to be driven for hours at a time. Hearing aids are “test driven” by being taken home by buyers for 30 days or more, being worn daily for ten or more hours at a time, subject to dirt, sweat, and heavy handling. You call that new?
You obviously had some positive experiences with audiologists and hearing aid dispensers and that’s great. But it has been my experience that there can be very little compassion or empathy for hearing impaired people in the hearing aid business. Like all practitioners in healthcare they must make a living. I’m just saying as a medical consumer we need to be our own advocates, because private practice audiologists primary concern is to make money and cut costs and sometimes it can be at the expense of the consumer. That is the problem with healthcare being a “business”. The patient is a consumer and must advocate for themselves.
This is very true. I’m surprised you were allowed to see the invoice. You bring up an important point about the possibility of manufacturers repackaging used aids as new. If this is going on, for shame. This is fraud, and audiologists and consumers don’t know and can’t prove it’s going on. I wonder if there are any internal or external quality control policies that prevent this form happening at the manufacturers? Based on the number of online complaints I read about problems with new hearing aids, I wonder. It would be nice to get a response from someone who works for a hearing aid manufacturer. What do manufacturers do with returned used hearing aids?
If you read the thread carefully you will see that it was not me who made that comparison - it was Halfear. I was responding to his comparison.
There is no evidence that what has been proposed is happening. The OP just made an assumption and ran with it.
There is still no evidence. Just an unfounded assumption.
No hearing aids ‘cost’ $10,000.
Transfer prices that manufacturers must clear are about $300. Cost to them must be less than that (or they wouldn’t make a profit).
I had always assumed the manufacturing cost was way less than $300, but I didn’t realise manufacturers were taking such a tiny proportion of the final price.
I most of the final price is to cover the audiologist’s costs, they should theoretically be able to sell me an identical spare set, identically programmed for, say, $400, shouldn’t they? Plenty of optometrists are doing this with glasses.
1 Like
That’s a transfer price; not a wholesale price. That’s the amount that includes all of the manufacturing costs, factory R+D and the supply chain plus marketing support to the Audiologist etc.
Wholesale prices to the Audiologist will be (in the U.K.) for the top end, circa £1k plus 20% tax per aid. These equate to about £3.2-£3.6k for a pair of top end aids.
This shows you that the manufacturers are taking at least as much profit as the Audiologist even with an independent set-up. Where they run the high street set-up, they take 100%.