Time to Read: 12 minutes
Just the other week we had an enquiry come in.
"I've bought a pair of second hand hearing aids from Gumtree, can you set them to my needs? How much will it cost?"
The question is not as straightforward as it first appears. In fact, it leaves us with more questions than answers.
- What make and model are the hearing aids?
- How old are they?
- Were they purchased in Australia (as opposed to overseas grey imports)?
- Are they the genuine product?
- Are they suitable for your hearing loss?
Let's unpack those questions to explore why they're important.
There are a number of hearing aid manufacturers selling hearing aids in Australia and they're all very good.
They regularly update their models with improved electronics and software to better support your hearing. There are different levels of technology in each model designed to maximise your best possible hearing across the broadest range of hearing loss.
New hearing aids come with a full three year warranty. In the case of Oticon, it is a four year warranty. That means if something goes wrong with the hearing aid during that time, you are covered for repairs.
You have no such guarantee with older models bought second hand.
Old hearing aids might function okay initially, but when they break down, you might be left out of pocket if the manufacturer no longer has parts to repair them.
Think of it like buying an older second-hand car. It runs well at the beginning, but finding spare parts is difficult, if not downright impossible. And there is no equivalent of auto wreckers for hearing aids.
There may not be any 'log book' for the hearing aid either, so you don't know when the hearing aid was last serviced - if at all.
At Value Hearing, we actively invite our clients in for a six month 'clean and check' to make sure the aids are delivering the best possible performance.
Toward the end of the warranty period we send our client's hearing aids away to the manufacturer for a comprehensive service to maximise trouble-free use.
We also recommend people replace their hearing aids every five years or so to ensure that their very best hearing is supported with the very best technology.
Manufacturers release programming software for hearing aids by territory, so if your 'bargain' hearing aids weren't sold in Australia, there is a chance that an Australian clinician may not be able to program them.
We had to disappoint one gentleman who bought hearing aids overseas thinking he was getting a great deal, only to find that no one in the country could program them for him because they used software not written in English.
And, if the hearing aid is especially old, there might not be the software available to program them at all.
Grey import hearing aids are sold in Australia but unlike aids bought locally, they have to be sent overseas for servicing which means you could be without your hearing aids for weeks without the convenience of loan aids.
But the most important question to answer is this: are those second hand hearing aids going to be good for your hearing loss?
The answer: you won’t know until you have had a hearing test.
Value Hearing’s comprehensive hearing test takes 90 minutes to two hours to complete. It looks at the health of your ears, test your ability to hear in quiet environments, your ability to cope with speech-in-noise, as well as your brain’s ability to process sounds. It is a combination of all of those tests that will reveal what make and model of hearing aid will give you your best possible hearing.
In short, those 'bargain' hearing aids may be of limited use in addressing your hearing loss.
So, after all that, is it possible to program a pair of second hand hearing aids from Gumtree?
The answer is ‘yes’ - IF the hearing aid is a current model that has been sold in Australia and IF has been tested as suitable for your very specific hearing loss.
Given that the clinician is working with hearing aids of an unknown provenance with an unknown service history, and taking the time to test your hearing and programming the hearing aids, the cost is not cheap.
In fact, the price is likely to be more than you paid for the second-hand hearing aids in the first place.
The bottom line is that purchasing second hand hearing aids might very well be a false economy.
We recommend that if you need hearing aids, you begin with a comprehensive test to know what level of hearing aid technology you need to hear your best.
Next, do your homework. The hearing aid industry in Australia is not regulated, which means the price of the exact same make and model of hearing aid can vary dramatically, sometimes by thousands. You might just find that buying a brand new pair of hearing aids, with the latest technology that works best with your hearing loss, is not much more than the cost of second hand ones.
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