Hear.com

I got the program downloaded and I can choose what program I want to use, depending on where I'm at and what I'm doing. I like that feature very well. I'm not 100% familiar with all the programs. I just keep bouncing around, trying to find the right program for the right atmosphere and I’m getting better at it. Plus, the home maintenance is not all that complicated. The hearing aids made a world of difference between me and my wife as far as our relationship, because she got tired of me saying “huh” all the time. She's the one who tells me to turn the TV up nowadays instead of down. My left ear hearing was profound and I've always had bad hearing in my left ear. I don't know if it was a birth defect or an ear infection back when I was a kid. It never got worse nor got any better. But it was bad enough I couldn't talk on the phone with my left ear. I was always turning my head to the right to get better hearing out of my right ear.

I learned to master lip reading. I got by but I'm getting older and I decided I’d go for the hearing aid because back when I was younger, I was very conscious about them because I always thought those are for old people. I'm old now so I qualify. When you’re growing up and you're a young kid or a teenager and you're on the dating scene, you don't wear a hearing aid. That sort of turned me off as far as interacting with the younger folks and girls so I put it off. I was able to get through it and cope with it. But I've aged and settled in with my life, and I'm not trying to impress anybody. I'm not looking for anything nowadays so me and the hearing aid get along just fine.

I'm still sort of new at this and I seem to be learning something every day. Today, I was able to control my hearing aid with my phone, but I don't have the whole plan or the whole scenario like I do. I've experienced that in the past and it seems to come back to my phone so I don't know if it's just an internet connection thing. But it happened even at home where I'm right next to Wi-Fi. The next time I tried my phone, I got the complete app.

I went through this before when I got my new phone and I assumed it was because I got a new phone. Somebody I talked to sent me the whole tablet and I had to wait on it, and go through the whole online thing where you talk to one another online and video chat. I was hoping that it's something that could be straightened out over the phone. But it's not a major inconvenience right now. I've got a few options but not the whole program like it has been, and it's just a little aggravating. There are four different modes on my phone when it's working right, and I don't have that option right now.

I did everything online and I loved it. I didn't have to wait in line and get the runaround. I didn't have to sit in an office and spend 20 minutes filling out forms in a strange place. I didn't have people telling me all the things I had to do to get qualified to even talk to them and I didn't have a lot of pressure. Nobody was pressuring me.

I went for the behind-the-ear, which is what I had. People don't notice it. I'm a very active person and I spent a lot of time fishing. I noticed that friends who have the in-the-ear piece were always concerned that the hearing aid was going to fall out and disappear. With my hearing aids, I like the fact that I talk to people through earphones. The Bluetooth feature is awesome and because I'm a musician, I've been playing around with that stuff a little lately and I'm enjoying a lot of the playback features when it comes to music.

I also worked in the computer field. I have some sense of technology. It's just slightly frustrating that I have to hold my phone for people to hear my voice. I've noticed that there is a reach to it, but you got to be pretty much attached to your phone. If I'm in the kitchen working and doing something and I'm talking to my sister, and then I walk anywhere, and she goes, "I can't hear you." It's a codependency that needs to be improved. I know from my previous hearing aids what the problem is, if there's not an appropriate microphone in the earpiece to pick up my voice. But it ought to be. I've got a microphone for input. That's what the whole hearing aid is all about. Why isn't that just using the mic that's built into the hearing aid?

That aside, Hear.com's service response has been very good. The other day, I was having a problem where only one ear was picking up the Bluetooth. I called in and it was answered right away. The person who answered the phone talked me right through things and we got the fix done.

So what you do is you hold a little clicker and the audiologist is initiating different sounds at different frequencies. And you click the clicker when you detect the sound. I went through all of that one ear at a time and they determined that there was more significant loss in one ear than the other. Hear.com recommended a high-end hearing device and they shipped that device through the audiologist. After the audiologist had done her evaluation, she determined that the hearing aid that was recommended by Hear.com would be excellent for where I was in the hearing loss that I was experiencing.

She was able to program those hearing aids based on my exact condition for each ear and each hearing aid was programmed separately. At the end of that, my wife came in and we had a conversation so she could record my wife's voice. She specifically programmed the hearing aids to key in on her voice, so that the hearing aids would focus on her voice. Like if we're in a restaurant or a movie or watching television, and there's background noise, the hearing aids are able to, focus on her voice. So I could still hear the background noise and the hearing aids didn't drown it out entirely. But I would be able to hear my wife's voice over that noise. The audiologist had me wear the hearing aids after she had the program for a couple of weeks.

We purposely went to a few restaurants and a sports bar with a bunch of TVs going where everybody had tables and were talking. My wife and I were sitting at a table having the conversation. Then we went out to eat breakfast and lunch in a couple of places. The first time we went out to breakfast, one of the hearing aids stopped working and I couldn’t hear anything in it. This was on a weekend at 9:30 in the morning. I called the audiologist office to leave a message, not expecting to get a call back before Monday, but she called me back while we were still at the restaurant 20 minutes later. There's a little insert that goes into the ear canal and it's got a receptor on the end. And it had gotten blocked with the ear wax. She told me how to clean it and it was functioning again.

So that was the kind of attention to detail and unexpected service that I got. I didn't really expect the doctor to call me back on the weekend with an answer. The audiologist works outside of Hear.com but some of her patients are referred to her by Hear.com. She said she really liked the technology and the hearing devices that Hear.com supplies. And the ones that they had sent for me to try out, she was very impressed with those.

We also tried sitting and watching television and having a conversation. So we had different situations. Then, we went in to the audiologist and she took my hearing aids and plugged them into her machinery. She determined how well they were performing in those various situations. One of the things that we did was we went to a Christmas party and there were about six couples there and some kids. The women were in one area and the men were in another area. I was having a conversation with a couple of the men and the audiologist was able to hone in on that party.

She said that she could see where I was in a situation where there were a lot of conversations and my wife wasn't near me. But there were a lot of high voices in the background, I was having a conversation with a couple of people with lower voices, and I was able to hear their conversations. And I could still hear the background noise, but I was able to focus in on that conversation close to me. In the end, we only had to make one slight adjustment to the geometry. On this hearing aid, there's a part that goes behind the ear and there's a little wire that goes to the little plug that you put into your ear canal. That wire was a little short, so it was going into the ear canal at an angle and I wasn't getting as good a reception. The audiologist made that wire a little bit longer, then we did another one month trial. We were back after the one month and she said she could see that my reception improved.

The representative from Hear.com, Clyde, also did a very thorough job of getting me prepared for the meeting with the audiologist. The process that he went through, all the questions that he asked, and the hearing aid that he recommended turned out to be right on as a result of the test with the audiologist. The other thing with Hear.com is that, once I got the hearing aids, they had a process of a couple of weeks where everyday, I had something on my phone that was a tip.

So for instance, they recommended the first few days not to wear them all day because it's kind of a change to your system. So your brain and ears have to adjust. And some people, if they wear them for 12 hours to begin with, they might be overwhelmed. So your brain is processing information that it hasn't processed for a few years and it could get confusing and disorienting. Then they had tips, like if your ears are itching, it's because there's something in there and your body is not used to that. And here's how you adjust to that.

Clyde was available, too. He gave me his phone number and told me not to hesitate to call him with any questions, prior to receiving hearing aids and after receiving them. Then he followed up several times after I'd gotten the hearing aids to make sure that I was on course and everything was going okay. For instance, the audiologist told me about some customers that didn’t use Hear.com and that didn't have these tips. Maybe they got overwhelmed and they just quit using their hearing aids. So Hear.com really goes the extra mile to make sure that if you need hearing correction and if you need hearing aids, you're able to adjust and get full use of them.

The first lady I talked to was gonna send me a set for $4,000. It fit inside my ear canal. But the more she talked and asked questions and the more I answered, she got turned me on someone else and I got these cheaper, but they're not in the ear canal. They are behind the ear with fiber optic cable right down into the ear canal. They've been working good. What they explained to me was that with the type of hearing loss that I've got, the electronic package they need does not come quite smaller for the in-the-ear canal to do what it needs to do for me. They are minimal for $1,500 apiece and are digital but I could hear nothing. They gave me somebody else's.

I bought my own and picked these. It’s $3,500. I’m getting a good deal. Hear.com's been right on time every time. The right one used to cut out a lot. Now, I just hit the off button and turn it completely off. Then I turn it back on, and it would come on. I still have that problem a little bit every now and then. It has something to do with the way the Bluetooth is interacting with my phone. I listen to TikTok videos, and I'll hear it at one ear but won't hear on the other ear. Then I'll hear out the other ear and won’t hear on this end. Then all of a sudden, I hear on both ears.

I hear better the male voice but not the higher tone pitch things. With the hearing aids, I thought the amount of improvement would be more. There are other ramifications to it all. I just couldn't hear certain frequencies. In certain environments, the hearing aids work to a degree. But sometimes after a while, you feel like you're talking underwater. Sometimes you hear the hum of yourself a lot of times. When the microphone pieces pick up noises, you're picking up quite a bit.

I still wear them. I have tinnitus and the hearing aids do mask it. I can still go to Hearing.com and I can still try and do things. The only disappointment and disadvantage of their program is you have to meet when they're in their office. There's not much flexibility there. If you need to go and get assistance, they're only in your area once a week. You can call somebody by phone but you can go in and talk about it and figure out what the deal is. If you're doing things, you only have one day to work with. It's not like you can go, “Well, I can come in this day or that.” No, it's Wednesday between 1:00 and 4:00. If you can't meet that there, then you gotta wait till the next week until you can meet that.

On the whole, I would recommend Hear.com but I would also include that people truly think about what they're trying to get out of it. For me, I'm glad I'm trying it because they say it will eventually offset tinnitus. My hearing functionality has probably improved maybe a couple of percent of what it was. I still sometimes have to go, “What did you say, hon?” or “What was that again?” When there's a lot of noise, it does help a couple of times. If you can take the app and modify the noises, sometimes you can get a good benefit out of it in some conditions. Some other products really couldn’t do that.

The hearing aid makes everything easier, especially conversations. I hear a lot of stuff now. It's behind the ear and then it has the part inside that has the part behind the ear. They're pretty comfortable. They tell you to wear them just a few hours until you get used to them. But on the first day that I had them and we got them calibrated, I was able to wear them all day.

I have the rechargeable hearing aids. The little case that they come in actually has a little bit of battery storage built in it. You can plug in the charger in the case and then when you take them out and go out and about, I keep that case with me or in the car. So when I stick them back in it, it charges them back up. Everybody I ever knew that had hearing aids said they eat the battery life away. So it's been really refreshing not to have to deal with any of that with my hearing aids.

What I really like about the ones from Hear.com is they got them programmed to my phone so I can just get my phone out and turn them up and turn them down. I can push a button just for audio. I’m really enthused with them. It's nice to be able to hear the people at the next table if they asked me something. Also, once I get the hearing aids in, I don't realize they're there. If you don't have hearing aids on, you either wouldn't hear the sound or it wouldn't be as loud. It does pick up sounds that you might not have really heard before.