Why You Should Not Buy Second Hand Hearing Aids on Ebay or Use Someone Else’s Hearing Aid.

With large improvement in technology for hearing aids in recent years, both the NHS and private sectors now provide digital hearing aids. This type of hearing aid is more individual and specific to the user than ever before.

Digital hearing aids use a small computer within the aid to process the sound. This allows your audiologist to make an accurate match to your hearing level needs. You may find on the internet different hearing aids being classified on how good they are by how many channels they use. Channels break your hearing spectrum into are number of adjustment bands. Three bands for example suggests the ability to adjust your high, medium and low frequencies. Twenty bands for example means the shape of your hearing loss will be matched a great deal more precise.

Here are 5 things to think about when using a hearing aid set up for someone else:

1) The hearing aid is set up based upon a hearing test which is not yours, it may be vastly different, with better technology and higher channels. This will make it inevitably less like your hearing than ever before.

2) For the hearing aid to be made either an impression of the previous user’s ear will have been taken to provide a custom mould of the ear or their ear will have been measured up to provide the right fitting. This will mean reduced comfort that you would not get with an aid fitting for you.

3) The individual’s ear shape is taken into account when the hearing aid is programmed using a procedure called Real Ear Measurements or REM’s for short. This means the aid will work differently when used in a different ear shape to the one it has been programmed with.

4) The digital hearing aid will have been programmed with user preferences, maybe an additional noise reduction feature, a volume control, a music setting or even none of these for ease of use. Would you not rather have a hearing aid set with what you need yourself?

5) Last but not least a hearing aid not programmed for your hearing loss requirements could potentially damage your hearing as it may provide unnecessary amplification. Your Hearing Helper has noticed that some hearing aids are being sold on Ebay and other auction sites, which is very unfortunate for those who purchase them and should not be encouraged. Some suspiciously look to be NHS. If an NHS hearing aid is sold in this way it is technically stolen goods because all NHS hearing aids are only ever on loan and are NHS property.

The overall problem with this may not be of those selling the hearing aids in this manner due to not being aware of the specific nature of digital hearing aids. The reason for this blog post is to help provide some understanding as to why it is important your hearing aid is set up for you and no one else. The bottom line is if you need a hearing aid speak to a specialist, we are lucky in the UK that money is currently not an issue in terms of hearing aids, whether you are looking to pay for a specific type of hearing aid or one that is free both these options are available to you.