calherewecome

Yesterday, I had my appointment with HearUSA in Torrance. It is a small store front that was easy to miss. There was a receptionist that had a several forms for me to fill out. Waited for about ten minutes to get to see the audiologist. (I think that’s the right term. Her card says she is “Doctor of Audiology”)

We got right down to business. She looked at my hearing test results and recommended a couple of behind the ear (BTE) models of hearing aids made by Siemens. The hearing aids are very small. Certainly smaller than I had envisioned. So I got to try one on. Hardly knew it was there. In fact, I would be afraid that it might fall off and get lost. That thought scares the hell out of me. ie. losing a device worth a couple of thousand dollars. Unfortunately, the demo units were just that demo units and didn’t actually work.

So here is a picture I took with my iPhone. It is really hard to get a feel from the picture how really small they are.

The audiologist was very pleasant. No hard sell. Just told me the prices. Both were in the range of $3600-$4600 for the pair. The price included the 20% discount for being a Kaiser member. Price included three year warranty and free batteries for three years. We were told that batteries last about a week with average usage. Package of 60 batteries runs about $25 on Amazon.com. I figure that package would last 6 months. So free battery offer is worth $300 over the three years. They also offer 12 month/0% financing. I suppose that eases the pain of forking over $5000 in one swipe of my Visa card.

The price didn’t include optional gadgets. Siemens sells a device that they call a “MiniTEK”. This is the device used to do Bluetooth and other various magic. Add $550, if you want Bluetooth. MiniTEK is device about the size of a garage door opener.

So here’s where we stand. Appointment with Costco next Tuesday. Then we get to decide. Told the woman at we’d get back to her once we decide. She didn’t try to persuade us to decide before we left. If it weren’t for the price, I would probably go with HEARx.

One more link. Here is the Facebook link.

Later…

This entry was posted on June 12, 2013 at 5:53 pm and is filed under Hearing Aids, Retirement, Technology. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Aging, hearing, hearing aids