Costco varies all over the board. I have heard both positives and negatives. A few locations have audiologists, but many have only hearing instrument specialists. Fully agree that the price is right in most cases. It is true that some of the hearing aids sold by Costco are 'locked'. That means that ONLY Costco can make adjustments. If you move or travel and have an issue with a hearing aid, you cannot get it adjusted or fixed unless you go to Costco. Not always possible.

In most cases with a poor fitting, it's not the hearing aid, but the fitter that can be the difference between a well fit device and a poorly fit one. Regardless of where you buy a hearing aid, you are a 'customer' of a product. If you do your research in advance you will likely learn that you should get manually operated telecoils and volume control, and also BlueTooth. But don't expect the provider to tell you that. Sometimes they'll tell you telecoils are 'old technology'. They are, but they still connect you to many audio devices and events. And, they do not add cost to hearing aids. Those of you who are on Connect are all computer users. Have you ever used your hearing aid's telecoils to hear audio messages on your computer?

Manual controls are important because you want to control what you're hearing. Automatic sounds good until you're in a setting where everything is too soft or too loud and your stuck with automatic controls. BT adds cost to hearing aids, but it's worth having if you use it to hear on the phone. It will also connect you to other hearing assistive technology. Again, there is a learning curve on all these extra devices. Worth time time to learn if you want to hear as best you can.

Question: Has anyone who has had a bad experience with hearing aids had a problem returning them whether to Costco or any other provider. Trial times vary, but what happens when one decides to return them?

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