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Keep spare aids?
Tue, 07/13/2010 - 00:31
I'm wondering how many of you have a spare set of aids because you find that your primary HAs are unreliable or you are concerned that your primary HAs might go out on you at a inconvenient moment.
The reason I ask is that my Phonak YES IX went out on me during a recent trip out of the country. I got them NEW on a Thursday and then left on Saturday. Two days into the trip, one stops working... the other follows a couple days later. I was miserable for the rest of the trip! In fact I am still suffering because it looks like it will be another week before they are fixed.
I'm considering getting a spare aid and two spare receivers. I figure that I'd be set pretty well since I can program the spare to right or left settings, depending on which aid died.
I think that my experience was not normal in which both died so close to each other and at a time that I couldn't get them checked with my audi. What are your experiences? Do they usually stop working about the same time or is it more often just one that dies?
I kept my previous aids to sub when I need to send in an aid for repair. Luckily, the first time I needed to send in my aids my provider had "loaners" for when a client's aids went in for repairs. I used those loaners a couple of times with my first set of aids. When I bought new aids a few years later, I kept the old ones just for that reason. I now have two sets of spares at home. Obviously they're not as good as my current aids, but they work good enough to help me out while my aids are getting repaired. This is especially the case when just one aid is substituting for the repair one and so I still have one good ear since that aids still working.