Cynical but possible I guess. I’ve seen all of the videos. Andrew Song’s grandfather with the hearing loss etc etc. He seemed genuine to me, but really, who knows? It looked like they really had to scramble to get it out there. Calling in favours from people with expertise in areas outside their own. Also, if you’re right, that’s a pretty long game they’ve been playing.
Anyway, I think we’ll see an announcement soon and I’m interested in what it might be.
From Whisper’s new home page: “While we have exciting plans ahead for all of the technology we have developed, we will be shifting our immediate focus away from hearing aids…” The word “immediate” makes me hopeful that they’re not finished with us.
My impression is that the people at Whisper want to walk away from any ties to the current system. Had they not provided the refunds and requested return of the equipment - which essentially amounts to a buy back - they would have been required by law to maintain an inventory of spare parts and some level of service to supply those parts. I believe that the law requires 7 years of spare parts for any manufacturer although I may be wrong about the number of years.
By the way in which they have handled this, the Whisoer can walk away without any further responsibility. For people like me who choose to hold onto the aids, we do so with the clear understanding that there are no parts and there is no service. I know that certain parts like speakers, wires, and domes are generic and can still be replaced. If the brain fails, the hearing aids can still be used, just without as much power in challenging situations or can become a backup pair if nothing else.
Clearly the people at Whisper have had their accountants crunch the numbers and have determined that even with the cost of refunds and buying out the remainder of the loans which financed the subscriptions, it is more cost effective for them to go this route than to maintain an inventory of parts and some level of staffing to provide service for any orders or claims. I wouldn’t be surprised if this process also allowed them to extricate themselves from any further financial commitments to audiologists.
By the time they fully shut down in December, they will have been open for business for about 3 years. Many users will only have had their aids for about a year or two, maybe less. Who throws out a well functioning, perfectly useful hearing after just a year or two?
Obviously Whisper is not taking the bankruptcy out-of-business route, since they’re saying they’re just changing the direction of their business. So yeah, I guess they have some kind of liability to their customers, hence the full refund offer. This also absolves them from further support and parts inventory, etc.
@d_Wooluf said earlier that I have a cynical view of this and I must admit that he’s right that I do. If I were a customer of Whisper, an early-adopter who stuck their neck out and bucked the unconventional approaches (with the brain and the lease) to spend my hard-earned money to support what they’ve developed because I believed they were on to something big and revolutionary that will help me with my hearing holy grail after I’ve tried out their product, I would feel pretty duped right now to see that they don’t truly have a vested interest in helping hard-of-hearing people like me hear better like they said they did after all, The moment a better business opportunity arises, they dropped this like a rock to run after the other big thing, whatever it is.
It feels like it’s been all staged, and I’d feel like I’m just a pawn in their long game and not really a beneficiary, despite getting a full refund for my money back and getting to keep the product for free. OK, so they bribed their abandoned customers to keep them happy and feel thankful they got something for nothing, but whatever happens to the principle of doing it because it’s all about helping hard-of-hearing people hear better, like Adnrew Song’s grandfather?
And here I was thinking what an ethical outfit they were for meeting their obligations and not (as you say) taking the bankruptcy route. Seriously, what did Whisper do to you?
I don’t have any irons in this particular fire but this falls into one of two possibilities in my book.
It was a genuine business, but the concept/training model vs. the strong established delivery system of the rest of the market didn’t or couldn’t deliver enough ROI to make it stand up by itself.
It was a fishing exercise from the outset, either for the acoustic environment data (hence the recall) or for customers willing to fund/follow a different delivery channel.
It will be interesting to see if they monetise the results to other companies.
That’s the thing, they didn’t do anything to me and so it enables me to have this objective opinion of them as an outsider looking in and be able to say what I really think. Imagine if I had bought into their product, I would have been so livid that they abandoned me as a customer like this, instead of being thankful that I get to have their freebie now, and praising them for their ethics.
I don’t think they gave their customers a refund out of the goodness of their heart because they feel an ethical obligation. They only did it as a matter of contractual obligation because they have this outstanding contract with their customers for the duration of the lease period that they no longer want to fulfill, so they must make the customers whole by giving them a full refund to get out of their contractual obligation.
Apparently they came into the long game prepared with a war chest big enough for the eventuality of this payout.
I’m disappointed that Whisper is withdrawing its product from the market. What I like about my Whisper experience is that they delivered what they said they v would deliver in terms of providing a hearing aid which provides better hearing in the most challenging situations, i.e. in background noise. And in the end I’m left with a hearing system which I can still use for years to come, so I don’t feel angry or duped at all. I knew what I was getting into by buying into a start up with no guarantee that it would succeed. There could have been a lot worse outcomes.
My cynicism. Is frankly with the entire hearing aid industry for the following reasons:
No independent testing. All of the data and other information about hearing aids come from the manufacturer. If I am buying a car, I can go to Road & Track or any number of other sources for verifiable data about the specs, verifiable information about performance, and subjective assessments about the driving experience. None of that is available with hearing aids.
No reasonable way to assess a hearing aid’s fit for me. In a weekend, I can go out and test drive every similar type of car that I’m interested in. If I wanted to trial every similar hearing aid from the Big 6, it would take me 6 months. And what audiologist would actually allow me to do that? The most important thing I want to know about any hearing aid is clarity of speech. Why haven’t they devised a way to put me in a booth with a pair of hearing aids, have me listen to speech, and then give me a score for word recognition with/without background noise. Then I could compare my results when wearing different hearing aids and make my buying decision from that, They test my hearing this way, why not try out hearing aids this way?
The new model scam. Every 2-3 years like clock work, each company comes out with either a new platform or an enhanced version of the last ones. The improvements are described in superlatives that blow us away. But invariably the results in actual use don’t match the hype. At least they haven’t in my case, and I’ve read enough posts from others to know I’m not alone. Does research really churn out significant improvements on such a predictable schedule? Or are they simply rebadging what they have with a new name and maybe with improved performance or maybe not.
Pricing. Each company offers its flagship product at several different performance levels. I doubt that it costs them any significant difference to produce the top of the line model vs the mid tier vs the lower tier. Same core hardware. Same operating system. Same platform. So why is the top of the line model offered at such an inflated price? Why can I buy the top of the line model at discounts through my insurance company or through on line outlets like Hearing Revolution. TruHearing, or others but the manufacturer insists on such a high price? Feels more like dealing with a car salesman than a health care professional.
Is what’s happened at Whisper the worst thing I’ve seen in the industry? Not even close.
@AbramBaileyAuD, could you please correct the title of this thread? “Whisper Hearing System withdrawn from market” perhaps.
Whisper probably could have charged for an unreturned system, by deducting it from the refund. They’re arranging for systems to be returned for disposal anyway, so the charge would have been pure gravy. But they’re letting us keep the system for free.
To elaborate on what I said yesterday, Whisper’s new home page says “we will be shifting our immediate focus away from hearing aids” (emphasis added by me). That qualifier “immediate” appears to imply that they intend to return to the hearing aid business. I don’t see how I have a claim on them to insist that they forego the chance of being first to market with some other product that might make them megabucks or gigabucks. Maybe they’ll return to the hearing aid market with even better technology gleaned from their other efforts, and plenty of money to fund the rebooted hearing aid business.
When I signed up for Whisper I knew it was a startup and the future was uncertain. It isn’t a bad outcome to have ended up with a set of free hearing aids that are pretty darned good at picking speech out of noise.
Obviously I wish I had kept my Whispers instead of returning them after my trial. But I couldn’t have anticipated the full refund they’re offering.
More idle speculation: I wonder if Whisper’s technology will reappear in over-the-counter HAs. The audi who fitted my Whispers said that the Whisper fitting software was much simpler than that of other manufacturers.
Maybe Apple bought Whisper to add its technology to AirPods. Or another company wants to build a product that includes HA technology that could compete with AirPods. Or Whisper could be planning to shift its focus to OTC HAs.
What if Whisper (or it’s acquirer) were able to design an OTC HA that could be set up by the user via an online hearing test, and a simple adjustment procedure via a phone app based on the audiogram the hearing test generated? And the result would rival the performance of existing top-of-the-line HAs?
THAT would be a game-changer! Talk about a tiny company disrupting an industry! And this scenario doesn’t seem that far-fetched to me.
It should be noted just as a point of fact that the lease financial model (subscription) is not unique in the hearing aid industry since Phonak is a major manufacturer which makes the Lyric available only via lease. In addition, Audicus has a lease option and Lexie and iHear are OTC brands which are sold via lease.
Thanks for clarifying this point, Bill. Lyric for sure is another unconventional hearing aid use model where it needs to be placed in the ear by a professional and you wear it 24/7 for months as a time. So it makes sense that a subscription/lease model is attached to that use model as well. Mentioning Lyric here just goes to reinforce my point that Whisper is in a class of unconventional hearing aids like Lyric, which is what I was simply trying to point out, that it’s not a mainstream approach like most others. And I don’t know much about Lyric’s sale success, but it seems fairly apparent that it’s not that popular, at least based on the lack of discussion about its use on this forum.
Audicus’s lease option is not exclusive and people do have the option to buy them as well, so I’d consider it part of a mainstream sales model with a plus advantage that you’re given an option to lease as well if you choose. I wish all other HA mfgs provide a lease option like Audicus as well.
But I still do stand corrected that the Whisper lease only model is not “unique” like I said. I should have used the word “uncommon” instead.
What’s happened behind the scenes with Whisper is a blank slate they we all fill with our own preconceptions and desires. In the end, what happened may be simply that the business model failed, and that’s that.
I somehow doubt that the technology involved in Whisper is so revolutionary that they can sell it to Apple, etc. for development. The model for HA technology, with a “brain” (whoo boy I knew this enterprise was doomed when I read that) carried separate from the device might be the sole real selling point. This model might be applicable to other devices.
Still, Apple just came out with a tnree d device that doesn’t require a separate brain. And this last requires a lot of processing power! Maybe the whole model is faulty and has been superseded by AI built into HAs themselves.
What is this “tnree d device”?
I think they’re talking about Apple’s Augmented Reality Visor. It has a built in computer in it.