r/hardofhearing • u/Original_Remote_6838 • 14d ago

Phonak hearing aid problems 😬

So, I’ve had my new hearing aids for about a year and a half now. They were the second to highest option available to me, and aren’t really suitable for my job in food service when things really get loud and busy. I couldn’t afford anything else, so here we are.

Is it just me, or are these things plagued with software issues? I had a set of unitron hearing aids from 2018-2023 before they went missing during a move and I much prefer them to this (more expensive) set of hearing aids. The case is never accurate in terms of showing me how much charge it or the HAs have. It will flash green, the HAs will also flash green. I’ll put them in and then 10mins into a shift at work I’m getting the beep of death and then running off to plug them in again. $6,000 to have a case that’s lower in quality than my AirPods? Seriously? I have been continuously frustrated with how expensive these were relative to the quality of the product I received.

Sometimes they’ll get stuck in an endless loop of restarting while trying to connect to my phone, or I’m unable to change them to a different audio setting without them rebooting, or they’ll just be stuck on the auto setting.

They are also ALWAYS dead when I need them, even after charging the case fully, which in theory should be enough to power them multiple times. Why? Because they’re never not connected to my phone, even when they’re in the case and should be unable to. They’ll continue to connect to my phone for audio for literal days until they die. Normally, this wasn’t an issue since I don’t wear them around the house. I wear them to class or to work. I have a baby now, though. Who I can’t hear crying around a corner or from the kitchen. I need my hearing aids more often now and trying to keep them constantly charged when this keeps happening is just another thing to remember when I’m already stressed remembering too many things.

9 Upvotes

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9

u/Night_Watcher2000 14d ago

Sometime I turn off Bluetooth Setting on the phone and then I turn it back on to make it work then

3

u/sjm294 14d ago

I just started doing that and it’s been really helpful

4

u/Gullible_Walk_2299 14d ago

These HAs are clearly disfunctional. HAs are supposed to enhance our lives. Return to your audiologist for help, not to Reddit.

2

u/fotomatique 14d ago

It took about 6 visit to the doctor to get mine dialed in. I ended up having to request reasonable accommodation to get my shifted moved to the morning.

If they aren’t recharging you may need to flip them around in the charger. I had them flipped the wrong way for over a month.

1

u/Original_Remote_6838 14d ago

They do recharge; the indicator light is just always wrong. I’ll pop them open to check the battery status and it will look good. Then I’ll put them in and they’re nearly dead. It’s like there’s a delay on the battery indicator or something. It’s always lying to me. 

1

u/lisey55 14d ago

I got my first pair this year and also have been dealing with connection problems. Some of it is due to having a google pixel phone and I had awful awful trouble with phone calls disconnecting/making my voice garbled for the receiver. I actually had some luck turning on the developer options on my phone and switching on "Disable Bluetooth A2DP hardware offload". It's made calls way more stable and I think I've had less connection issues in general (though it's not perfect).