This really should be a piece of cake to achieve. Find a hearing professional who offers Starkey product. Buy your hearing aids there but explain that you will only do this if they will re-program the old aids too. In the ideal world have them sent back to Starkey to be unlocked so that any Starkey dealer can re-program them in the future.
I can’t imagine why any hearing professional would not offer this service free of charge.
As of right now, the Nu-Ear aids can only be programmed by a Nu-Ear dealership, so this may be why you have run into problems getting them reprogrammed.
Don’t underestimate what you bring to the table though. You are basically offering to buy new hearing aids, and introduce your mother to a clinic that might later sell her an upgrade to the aids you are giving her. It doesn’t make any sense why any office would not jump all over the opportunity, even if it is only driven by their own self interest!
A few suggestions. If you already have a Starkey dealer there should be no reason they can’t call NuEar and make arrangements to either access the software, or send the hearing aids to NuEar and have them reprogrammed. I think your Starkey person needs to make a few calls. Or you can email NuEar direct via their website and ask them for suggestions.
If the new dealer sends the aids in to Starkey, they can be unlocked, so that the regular Starkey software can access them and reprogram them. It is just a software option that the lab can change.
But it’s a bit political, the whole point of the lock out is that the guy who owns that NuEar store has a protected territory and his competition cannot take his patients from him. So he could have a legitimate beef with Starkey if they go around unlocking his patients aids all the time.
All that said, it happens all the time. Especially in a case like this where clearly you have lost trust with your NuEar provider and wish to work with someone new. I know with some perseverance you can get this done.