Are You Being Profiled When Buying Hearing Aids?

A few months ago, a customer of ours told me that he went to a hearing aid clinic for an audiogram.  We’ll call him “Bill”.  Bill was asked to fill out a new patient questionnaire.  At first he didn’t think much of the questions.  They included the typical name, address, and contact information.  Then he got to the question about what kind of car he drove.  It struck him as a little strange, but he answered the question and wrote in that he drove a 2008 Cadillac.

After taking the hearing test, he was consulted about the results.  The audiologist told him that he had high frequency hearing loss.  He said that there were a number of hearing aids on the market that would help his situation a little bit, but there was only one model that would do the job right.  He claimed that it was “the Cadillac of hearing aids”.  This model also had a price tag of over $3,000 each.
Bill is a pretty sharp guy and he immediately thought back to the new patient form that he had filled out a few minutes earlier.  At that point, Bill picked up his things and headed for the door, but before leaving, he asked the doc, “What if I had told you that I drove a Volvo?”

Patient profiling has been a hot topic in the news as of late.  It is when physicians make a determination on what the patient can afford and then recommend treatment accordingly.  Was Bill a victim of patient profiling?  There is no way to be sure, but it certainly appears that way.

Another one of our customers recently told me about his experiences with a hearing aid clinic.  He went in for a hearing exam and was diagnosed with high frequency hearing loss.  The technician gave him a proposal for a pair of programmable hearing aids that came to around $2,800.  He went home and started searching the Internet for the same hearing aids.  He found them at our online store for a fraction of the price that he was quoted earlier that day.  When I spoke to him, I told him that we could program the aids to the specifications of his hearing test.  The next day he went to the clinic and asked them if he could have a copy of his audiogram.  Suspecting that he may have found the aids cheaper somewhere else, the audiologist immediately said that he would take $1,000 off the price if he bought them from him.  Each time that our customer said he did not want to buy the aids from the clinic, the audiologist cut down the price by a few hundred dollars.  Eventually, the doc gave our client his audiogram and he bought the aids from us.

Make no mistake about it, hearing aid clinics exist for one reason and one reason only, to sell you hearing aids.  The more expensive the aids, the more money the clinic makes.  A typical markup on hearing aids at a clinic is well over 300% over the wholesale cost.  Your average retail store only marks up the price of goods by 45%.  I’m not telling you to avoid having your hearing checked by a physician, I’m simply telling you that you have options when it comes down to the actual buying of hearing aids.

We offer a variety of hearing loss solutions in our online store.  Over the past two years we have saved our clients countless amounts of money.  Our most popular solution is the Rosebud Digital Open Fit Hearing Aid.  the Rosebud Open Fit is for folks with typical high frequency hearing loss.  Symptoms include not understanding speech clearly, having trouble hearing what people are saying in the presence of background noise, understanding men better than women or children, and sometimes a ringing in the ear.

The Rosebud Open Fit allows the sounds that you don’t have trouble with to pass through your ear naturally, while at the same time giving you needed amplification of the sounds that you do need help with.  The results can be life changing.  You can try this aid for 60 days and if you are unhappy with the results, you can return it for a refund.

Of course, you can always choose to pay thousands for a similar aid at a clinic too
As always, discuss your hearing problems with your physician and save a fortune by buying your hearing aids online.