Refurbished hearing aids

A friend of mine is losing his hearing. He gave me a pair of hearing aids. They are Oticon Digifocus II DF II P BTE (they are working but not real well) I am currently using Walker Digital HD Pro and one of them is not working.

My question is would I do better to have these Oticon hear aids refrubished or to replace the Walker. Also what’s the take on the online refurbishing companies? I have heard bad things in reading compliants. Are there any that are legit and which ones.

Thanks

I faced a similar situation sometime back. My hearing aid dispenser refused to repackage my mother’s old hearing aids to fit me. She sayd because they were a prescribed medical device that it would be unethical to modify them for my use.

Not to mention not nearly as profitable as persuading you to buy new HAs.

Sad,

TerryB

There may an element of truth to that, too.

However, you would be a good candidate to return to buy a new pair when the refurbished ones no longer served your needs, so while not profitable now, you could be a return customer and a person to recommend their services to others.

There can be good reasons not to repackage Patient A’s hearing aids for Patient B’s use. I would not count ethical considerations among them, at least not as a blanket policy. Where it can be unethical to do this is if the Patient A’s aids are inappropriate for Patient B’s hearing loss. But when an audiologist makes that the policy for every aid and every patient, the audiologist is saying that financially it just doesn’t work for the audiologist. There are audiologists who will deal with used aids, particularly if that’s all a patient can afford. If you’re in an area with few choices for hearing services, this may not be possible, but in a populated area, if you call around, you can probably find an audiologist who will work with you on this. You should expect to have to pay fitting and adjustment appointment fees and assume the financial risk that an aid may not be possible to refurb. It’s not fair to get mad at the audiologist because you shelled out several hundred dollars in refurb costs and appointment fees for an aid that in the final analysis couldn’t be made to work or with which after all the repairs and fittings, you were ultimately dissatisfied.

Backlash over such problems can be another reason besides pure profit motive that some audiologists don’t want to get involved with used aids. Some people who are determined to do this can also make a lot of noise when it doesn’t work out.

Hamjor’s observations are very valid.

I held no anomosity toward my HA dispenser even though I made it clear that I was willing to assume all responsibility for the suitability of my mom’s old hearing aids. Even so, she made a decision based on what she felt was right and I had no justifiable reason to argue with her.

As it turned out, I did eventually buy my new hearing aids from them and all is well.