Are Costco Hearing Aids good anyway?

You need to hear to feel you are living. Our hearing ability is one of our important senses that connects us to the world. For some reason, if you partially or maybe significantly lose your hearing ability you may need to consider using hearing aids.

Before giving the decision to use hearing aids or not you should always consult your health care professional. Information provided in this post is educational purposes only.

Once you decide using hearing aids the next questions is where to buy them.

In this post, we are going to talk about Costco's hearing aid centers and the instruments offered by these centers.

As part of bringing a one-stop shopping experience for customers, Costco offers health services such as pharmacy, optometry and hearing aids.

Did you know Costco is the largest hearing aids provider in the US? That is right Costco sells more than 11% of all hearing aids in the US. In fact, Costco owns hearing aid centers with specialized staff to serve its clients. Their well-trained staff can test your hearing ability and recommend appropriate hearing aids that can fix your hearing problem.

Pros and Cons of Costco hearing aids

Before introducing or reviewing Costco hearing aids, let’s have a look at some common pros and cons.

PROS

• Free check-ups and cleaning
• Strong purchasing power
• Provides many hearing aid brands in one store
• We can obtain hearing aids in a significantly lower price
• Hearing centers open on weekends
• Costco hearing centers have specialized hearing care professionals because of the State law, that requires either a Hearing instrument specialist or an Audiologist.
• Hearing care professionals.

Now, lets check some common cons of Costco hearing centers.

CONS

• Not all Costco stores have hearing centers.
• A limited selection of hearing aids in some Costco locations.
• Locked hearing aids (Costco hearing aids can be only programmed at their location)
• Don’t accept insurance. (Against to common belief, almost insurances have hearing aid benefits, in some cases, really good insurance. But can’t be used at Costco services)

Without these, I noticed another fact about low repeat business in Costco hearing aids. When I checked several industry sources, I understood that only 20-25% buy a second set from Costco.

Based on my research, I can describe you some reasons:

• Inconvenience
• Poor service
• Locked hearing aids
• Low-skilled hearing care providers
• Poor treatment outcomes
• Lack of attention to detail
• Sales driven model vs. Care driven model

What does Costco hearing centers offer?

Let's discuss some special offers of Costco hearing aid centers that other providers haven’t.

May I list them below?

• Premium technology
• Costco value pricing
• Free hearing tests ( I will explain later)
• Free product demonstrations
• Free follow up appointments
• Free loss and damage coverage( with no deductible)
• Free hearing aid cleanings and check-ups
• Free warranty periods(Warranty varies by model)

What is the Costco hearing test?

If you reached any local hearing aid center in Costco, firstly the staff there will recommend you to do a hearing test. I think this test will be in a private room and also it may complete within one hour.

After getting your test result, they will sit with you and discuss the results of your hearing test and your recommended next step.

At this time, staff will suggest several Costco hearing aids. If they do, they go with demos and will discuss available options.

At this point you may think of the following questions,

• Which is the best available hearing aid for me?
• May I get a free hearing test from Costco?
• How much does the hearing aids from Costco cost?
• Which hearing aid brands are available at Costco?

Keep reading we are going to cover responses to all those questions.

What is the best hearing aid available for me?

If you check about reviews of hearing aids, you may find Kirkland Signature models are popularly rated (Kirkland 9.0, Kirkland 8.0 hearing models)- we will deeply discuss all available hearing brands at coming chapter-

The reality is there is no “best hearing aid”.

Really we can’t find any singular hearing aid product at the market, which will be completely best for everyone.

This is because of several things they will be considered when we recommend hearing aids, such as physical size of hear, degree of hear loss and also your lifestyle.

When we evaluating these three things, I think the best solution for your problem will be prescribed.

How much do hearing aids from Costco cost?

You can expect Costco hearing aids to be relatively cheaper than the market prices.

Here I am going to explain you about how much do hearing aids from Costco cost?

Range of Costco hearing aids prices depends on the selected model and brand.

I think the cheapest prices of Costco hearing aids start from 999 dollars and up. This will be only starting prices of just the hearing aids. There may be extra for accessories and extended warranty.

Now let’s list hearing aids prices below.

I recommend you for getting the most updated prices to give a call to your local Costco hearing aid center and ask the staff clearly. There is a chance to vary in prices in a base of locations.

A compare with traditional hearing aid providers

For realizing the cheap prices, let’s compare them with the prices of traditional hearing aid providers. I think the price will differ dramatically.

• Traditional hearing aid companies
• Cost: $2300 (US national average) per one hearing aid and $4600 for a pair. These costs I think may go higher.
• Process: hearing test and recommendation
• Costco hearing aids
• Cost: 1499 dollars for a pair of Kirkland 9.0, it is less than $4600 US national average.
• Process: Hearing test and recommendation.

Available hearing aid brands in COSTCO

We were discussing Costco hearing aids, its prices, and services earlier. Now let’s take a look at which hearing aid brands are available in Costco.

Costco offers various brands of hearing aids and you will find Costco’s available devices below.

• Kirkland Signature 9.0
• Philips Hearlink
• Resound Vida
• Phonak Brio 3
• Rexton Adore

Now, let’s take a quick rundown about few Costco hearing aids:

Kirkland

While many of us know that Costco is a one of major supplier of hearing aids, some of us will be unfamiliar with Costco’s Kirkland Signature hearing aid brand.

You know it is one of biggest sellers in North American warehouses.

Although Kirkland Signature 7.0 was considered as premium level technology, they are offered at lower price than other Costco’s premium hearing aids.

Kirkland signature 7.0 comes in twelve distinct colours.

Another important feature I noticed about 7.0 is it’s customised and comfort volume settings. They help us to reduce the whistling and give us a good natural sound experience.

With this hearing aid, Costco also offers a kit of a cleaning brush, travel pouch, presentation case, 10 inch zinc batteries and a cleaning cloth.

Rexton

May I introduce you about another hearing aid brand in Costco?

Yes, I will explain you about Rexton.

In my research, I found the three different kinds of Rexton hearing aids.

1. Legato custom_Comfortable listening experience and flexible fit.
2. Legato MB BTE_ Provides rechargeability.
3. Legato IX_ A CIC device which doesn’t need an impression.

Rexton hearing aids have many innovative features like we can connect them with an app in our smartphone, which helps us to adjust the volume, change the hearing aids programs and adjust the direction of the microphone in hearing aid.

If you check more about Rexton’s features, you get that you can pair Rexton’s accessories to make connections to your TV, phone and other devices without any limitations.

Resound

I think this hearing brand( Resound Cala) is only available at Costco and it offers good clarity.

We can consider many other good features to Resound hearing aid as it promise location based sound adjustments, style customisations and apps for personalising the experience.

Phonak

Now, let’s introduce another hearing aid brand of Costco.

Really, Phonak has four different hearing aids;

Phonak Brio 2 b, Phonak Brio 2 , Phonak Brio 2 1 and Phonak Brio 2 p.

Phonak’s brio serious offer receiver-in-the canal, behind-the-ear hearing aids.

Another main factor is that they are wireless and help us to single out sounds suddenly and to listen phone conversations with both ears.

Benefits of buying hearing aids from Costco

We discussed about hearing aids brands available in Costco and their prices.

Let’s check what benefits we get if we buy hearing aids from Costco.

We can see there are several benefits to buying these hearing aids but I think the main benefit is everything will be done at once.

I mean the hearing test, consultations for finding our best hearing aid and product demos by specialized staff.

• If you are not satisfied or happy with Costco, you can return them within 6 months and you have a 180-day money-back guarantee.
• For ensuring the hearing aids, Costco offers check-ups after the initial purchase, like
• Fitting properly
• Or need a good tuning
• Working as intended (All services are free)
• The top benefit I think is their cheaper prices and level of service.

Finally, the information provided in this post is true to the best of my knowledge and my good research.