Hearing Aid Specialist for the self funded client

Value Hearing & Tinnitus Solutions is a brick and mortar hearing aid business, with outlets in NSW, QLD and WA, built from the ground up by an Australian audiologist who has seen it all, the good and the bad. Through his experience in a variety of private and government audiology settings he has hand picked the aspects that served his clients the best and got rid of the things that clients disliked. Through a belief that customer satisfaction comes before profit and that transparency and honesty are the keys to building trust, Value Hearing and Tinnitus Solutions had become an overnight success when it first opened its doors in Perth in 2009. We now have a presence in three states and are growing rapidly. As such Value Hearing is uniquely geared to best serve you, the self funded hearing aid buyer, through more comprehensive testing, more choice with the largest range of hearing aids, gold standard hearing aid fitting techniques, more included extras and customer support that is second to none. All this is achieved while offering hearing aids at some of the lowest prices in Australia. We are able to keep our prices low due to specialisation and our popularity which brings higher volumes of satisfied paying hearing aid customers through our doors than the average hearing aid clinic. As such we can charge you less and still remain sustainable , while offering you much more than our competitors can.

Not tied down to a single hearing aid brand

How would you feel if you went to see a doctor that could only prescribe one brand of medication, which meant that your condition might not be treated as effectively as it might have been with another brand of medicine?

As outrageous as this sounds, this is often what happens in some hearing clinics. Many hearing aid retailers limit the number of hearing aids they supply to one to three brands, while a lot of hearing aid retailers are actually owned by a hearing aid manufacturer, limiting your choices only available through that company. 

This means you could potentially be offered a less than optimal hearing aid, or simply pay much more for features that could be had from another manufacturer for a much lower price. 

We believe in offering you choice. We have available hearing aids from the top 9 hearing aid brands available in Australia. Out clinicians aren't encouraged by incentives or rules to subscribe as specific brand. This allows our clinicians to freely choose the best hearing aid for your needs, while making it possible to find the best value for you at the same time. Due to the fact that our clinicians fit up to 3 times as many hearing aids per month as the average clinician (based on international research by Unitron on hearing practice performance), they also have more experience in top end hearing aids than most other clinicians in the field. This means despite our wide range of hearing aid brands, they are still experts in what they do. 

Selecting the right hearing aids for you at the right price

Hearing aids can only be prescribed after a comprehensive hearing test has been performed by a qualified hearing professional such as an audiologist. Most often a hearing needs assessment forms part of such an assessment. During the needs assessment the audiologist will establish in which situations you have the most difficulty hearing and also which situations you would most like to hear better in. This gives us some clues as to which level of  hearing aid technology might  best meet those needs.

We however believe, that a person's inherent hearing ability in noise is probably the single most important factor in selecting a specific level of hearing aid technology. The reason for this is that most modern hearing aids can quite easily improve a person with hearing loss's ability to hear in quiet. Many hearing aids have sufficient sound quality and more than enough channels to do the job of amplifying all incoming sound to match the hearing loss, when there is no extraneous noise present.

A much more challenging task for a hearing aid is cleaning up the speech signal when there is competing noise present. To complicate matters further, this competing noise is very often speech as well (background babble). Top range hearing aids tend to do a much more decent job of reducing background noise relative to speech than basic hearing aids do. Many hearing aid clinics simply recommend a top end hearing aid if someone needsto hear speech in the presence of a lot of noise. This would certainly help, but there would be a fairly large proportion of people who might have had the same benefit in noise from less complex and consequently less expensive hearing aid technology.

The reason for this is that hearing loss  generally occurs in the inner ear (about 95% of hearing loss). The ear can be considered to simply be the microphone of the brain. It is actually the brain that does all the hearing, listening and interpretation. Different people have different natural capabilities regarding speech and noise processing, depending on how their brain handles and interprets sound.

Lets compare two individuals, Person A and Person B.  Person A has a hearing loss but is capable of processing speech in background noise well as long as the sound is made loud enough. Person B is someone with the same hearing loss as Person A but has poorer processing of speech in noise. They both require sounds to be louder in order to hear in noise, so they both need hearing aids. Person A will however require less sound cleaning in noisy situations than person B to be able to hear and understand the same amount of speech. Thus Person A will be able to do as well as Person B in quiet and in noise, but with a much more basic and thus much less expensive hearing aid.

Even though testing now exists to help identify who might do better with what level of hearing aid technology, not many hearing professionals employ them on a regular basis as they tend to be time consuming or simply unavailable in their work setting. Value Hearing & Tinnitus Solutions' hearing specialists always employ these hearing tests, whenever possible, if hearing aids are being considered. We regularly find that people who might have benefited from more basic hearing aids have been recommended very advanced and thus expensive hearing aids elsewhere.

Inevitably we trial them on the more basic technology and find that more frequently than not it works perfectly for them.  Apart from the savings gained from our lower hearing aid prices, this can often result in further significant savings as you are not paying for features that you do not need. We also do not have a vested interest in recommending one hearing aid brand or model above another as our clinicians earn the same no matter what they prescribe. So we always aim to select the best value hearing instruments for your needs and capabilities and would never sell hearing aids simply based on price.

Tip:

You can tell when someone sells hearing aids to you based one price alone if they line up between two and four hearing aids and give you the prices for you to choose which fits your budget. They might explain the features but inevitably the decision is made on price.The prices can vary significantly between the lowest cost option and the most expensive option (more than $2500 a pair difference). There is no link made between your speech in noise hearing score (as tested at the visit) and the hearing aid's capabilites.

Offering products to completely address your hearing loss, like we do, is subtly different. You will still be given differnent options but each choice will be related by the audiologist to your unique hearing loss and speech in noise hearing performance. We then allow you to choose where the best value lays for you.

We give you more but at a lower price, which means better VALUE hearing aids.

Aside from our low hearing aid prices, there are many other differences between us and our competitors:

• We give you uop to 66 batteries per hearing aid instead of just the usual 6 batteries per hearing aid. This means you have lower ongoing running expenses on top of the savings you already receive from our hearing aid pricing.

• We spend 2 hours with you during your intial consultation compared to 30 minutes to an hour at most most competitors. This allows us to completely understand your needs, hearing loss and hearing aid options before making recommendations. We want to get it right the first time and research shows that spending more time with hearing aid clients initially leads to more satisfied hearing aid users in the long run.

• We don not employ hard selling techniques like several of our larger competitors do. We determine your requirements and offer you independant hearing solutions, the choice remains yours and you are never under any obligation to follow our advice or purchase from us.

• We offer full free after sales support for three years after the date of your initial fitting rather than the one year industry standard. Thus any visit relating to hearing aid issues or adjustments are completely free for three years, meaning you will continue getting the best possible performance from you hearing aids even after the honeymoon period has passed.

• We recall our hearing aid clients once every 6 months for a hearing aid checkup and adjustment to ensure they are consistently getting full benefit from their hearing aids. Most other providers would only recall you if they think you need new hearing aids.

• We offer free telephone and email support for the life of the product.

• We offer you a choice of hearing aids from most major manufacturers available in Australia, meaning you will be able to get the best available hearing aid on the market at any given time, rather than being tied to one hearing aid manufacturer. 70 -80% of our competitors are actually owned by hearing aid manufacturer's severly limiting your choice.

• We use unique individualised hearing aid comparison charts, produced by software developed in-house, that clearly compares the features of hearing aid solutions specifically tailored to your hearing needs. This makes it easy for you to see what the differences between the different hearing aid recommendations are.

• We give unique, clearly laid out hearing aid quotes showing the chosen hearing aid's features, as well as stating all the inclusions offered at the price.

• We have no issues giving pricing by phone or by email if you have already been quoted on hearing aids. We make it easy to shop around and even encourage it.

• We offer after hour appointment times on request.

• We provide services and procedures specifically designed for and geared to self-funded clients, rather than the generalised services and procedures offered by regular hearing clinics. We do what we do very well.

• We spend more time with our clients. The average hearing aid assessment from our competitors lasts 60 minutes, often only 30 minutes. We allow 100% more time by allowing 120 minutes. This gives us time to go through your results and recommendations with you in as much details as is required. The latest research shows that the more time is spent with the client during a hearing assessment, the more satisfied they tend to be with their hearing aids.

• We use state of the art testing and hearing aid fitting equipment and include many very recent procedures not regularly employed in Australia to ensure you receive the best possible outcome and the right hearing aids for your needs.

• When we fit your hearing aids we the latest proven real ear fitting and verification techniques allowing us and you to see exactly how the hearing aid is responding in your individual ear canal relative to your own hearing result. By taking the care and time at the initial fitting to use these advanced techniques, we can ensure you have the best possible starting point on your journey to better hearing. Without these advanced techniques, which is far too frequently neglected in private clients' hearing aid fittings, you are working with a 30% chance of getting things right the first time. With them your changes are more than 80% of getting things very close to perfect first time around.

• We offer you 60 days in which you can return your hearing aids if dissatisfied for any reason, unlike the 30 days offered by most of our competitors. Saying this, we have one of the lowest return-for-credit rates in the industry as we always do everything in our power to ensure your utmost satisfaction.

Hearing aid features and benefits

Please note:

Whilst much care has been taken to ensure that the information in this document is accurate and factual, this is still a simplification and generalization of the workings of hearing aid technology from a large variety of brands and models. As such we do not accept any liability for any inaccuracies or misunderstanding arising from the use of this document. We will however endeavor to correct any inaccuracies or sections responsible for any misunderstandings when they are brought to our attention. Please advise us if there are any sections that require clarification or improvement by calling us on 1800 157 429.

Also note that this information is provided to help empower you, the hearing aid user, as to the inner workings of hearing aid technology. This is not intended to override any hearing aid recommendation made to you by a qualified hearing care professional.