The Good, The Bad and The Ugly!

FACT: the clinician makes 300-500 per aid fit and the middle man makes approximately $1,500/aid. The sucking sound is greed draining your pockets – on the up-side, prices will come down in the next 3-5 years as competition heats-up.

Seriously, for some remarkable videos, and photos, see these links: 

1. What’s in your ear?
2. No, REALLY, what’s in your ear?

NEWS FLASH PEOPLE: Overhead can be brought down and policies can be instituted so “frequent-flyers” are given fair amount of service without driving costs of doing business up.

I beleive my evil plan to lower prices is working.

I paid $5590 twice in two years for 4 hearing aids. Later, I found that most of the cost of the aid was profits for the dispenser. Most in-clinic “retailers” such as ENT’s, Audiologists, Hearing Aid dispensers use the “BIG” mark-up pricing model. There are other parties interested in keeping the prices as high as possible as well; buying groups of many types with the clout to get extremely low prices from the manufacturers. They rarely pass-on the savings to the consumer and they have a number of legitimate sounding reasons for not doing so – it’s all in the magical middle-man services that only they can supply – bunk.

They would have you believe that you can’t get a good fit, or discounted price, without some nasty consequence or hidden expense. i.e. stay with their program, which pumps your money into their pockets.

My mentor was very proud of the fact that “hearing aids werer a blind item – no one knows the wholesale cost” said with a big grin! This is a tired miserable way of doing business and I plan to change it.

It’s marketing spin – don’t believe it!

For every prognosticator who sees gloom and doom if you buy a hearing aid online, through mail order, or from any other supplier than themselves, I say this “it’s all about the money, not the consumer”.

New distribution models are taking hold that challenge the status quo. The established “old-school” doesn’t want you and I looking at the Internet, mail order or other alternatives that are cheaper than themselves. Why? Profits. See the paragraph on Oligopoly below for a nice chat on “protectionist” behavior.

The Oligopoly members point to the serious and dangerous underlying medical consequences of not using the process they defined and that they want you to use! Hmmmmmm, could it be that they have a biased opinion based on a potential 50% drop in their revenues, which competitive price pressure may bring?

No, they just worry about you and I, the poor hearing impaired guy or gal – rubbish I say. This is the mindset that keeps hearing aids at 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 times the wholesale cost.

Strangely, a number online hearing aid sellers completely and fully address face-to-face fittings though their own clinics, or those they coordinate with, to make sure the client has a complete evaluation.

In an oligopoly, there are only a few firms or groups that make up an industry (think retail hearing aid sales). This select group of firms, or groups, has control over the price and, like a monopoly, an oligopoly has high barriers to entry.

The products that the oligopolistic firms or groups produce are often nearly identical and, therefore, the companies, which are competing for market share, are interdependent as a result of market forces. Assume, for example, that an economy needs only 100 widgets. Company X produces 50 widgets and its competitor, Company Y, produces the other 50. The prices of the two brands will be interdependent and, therefore, similar. So, if Company X starts selling the widgets at a lower price, it will get a greater market share, thereby forcing Company Y to lower its prices as well. CONSIDER THIS – the status quo does not want lower prices, due to profit considerations.

In the retail hearing aid world, honest and substantive price competition scares those that have been gorging themselves on the backs of people who need a fair priced hearing aid.