Hear.com Reviews

About Hear.com

By HighYa Research Team

Published on: Sep 22, 2015

Hear.com is a hearing aid specialist that offers competitive pricing and a wide selection from leading manufacturers, including Oticon, Phonak, Siemens, and more.

Hear.com also offers free phone consultations with audiologists, local hearing tests and hearing aid fittings, as well as a 100% satisfaction guarantee on every hearing aid they sell. Why? Because Hear.com wants to address your hearing loss and improve your quality of life.

According to the company, the process works over 3 steps:

1. A free phone consultation with one of Hear.com’s audiologists.
2. Afterward, you’ll attend a fitting at one of Hear.com’s local partner providers. There, you’ll also be able to receive a hearing test based on “strict medical criteria.”
3. Once you’ve received your hearing aids, Hear.com will adjust them to meet your needs until you’re 100% satisfied.

Have you ever heard of Hear.com? Probably not. But their prices seem great, so you’re here to find out if Hear.com is the real deal, or just another scam.

First, let’s take a look at exactly what kinds of prices you can expect.

Hear.com’s Hearing Aid Pricing, Quality, & Guarantee

Hear.com offers 3 different levels of hearing aids, depending on your needs and budget:

Basic: $700 - $1,600

Ideal for optimal speech comprehension in a home environment, and for those with mild to moderate hearing loss. Includes digital sound processing, feedback cancellation, and up to 4 hearing programs.

Mid-Range - $1,600 - $2,200

In contrast, mid-range hearing can be used for helping you hear in a variety of daily living situations, and might be better for individuals with moderate hearing loss. This includes wireless TV and phone connections, adjustable speech recognition, speech enhancement, directional hearing, and enhanced acoustic orientation.

Premium - $2,200 - $3,000

Regardless of your level of hearing loss, premium hearing aids will provide you with the best hearing in the highest number of situations. These will also come with the widest range of styles and colors, 360-degree hearing, automatic adjustments, and more.

Depending on the price category you choose, Hear.com offers up to 3 years of warranty coverage, along with up to 5 free service appointments.

You’ll also have 45 days to get your deposit back if you change your mind.

In order to request a refund on your deposit, speak with an audiologist, or find a local partner, you can call Hear.com’s customer service at (786) 574-3799.

Reading through the differences between hearing aids might have caused your eyes to glaze over. But in real-world terms, what’s the difference between these levels?

Differences Between Hearing Aid Levels

You probably noticed that Hear.com calls modern hearing aids “small, high-performance computers with intuitive controls,” instead of the bulky models of yesteryear. And like any other electronic device, the more you pay for your hearing aid, the more features it will come with and the smaller it’ll be.

Whether you pick a behind-the-ear (BTE) or in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aid (the Mayo Clinic website provides an excellent article on how to decide which is right for you), the goal is to help you hear your best.

However, you have to remember that your ears are complex structures, which pull in a variety of different sounds, including voices, background noises, intermediate sounds, and more.

Then, these sound signals are quickly processed by your brain to provide real-time feedback. Among other things, this whole process provides spatial awareness. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to know where different sounds are coming from or how close they are to us.

To provide this spatial awareness, hearing aids have to do a lot of different things at the same time, including:

• Processing all incoming sound
• Differentiating between voices and background sounds (while reducing feedback/reverberation and wind noise)
• Immediately recognizing different voices to “tune in” better
• Automatically adjusting when moving from one environment to another (e.g. a noisy restaurant to a quiet cab). Some lower end hearing aids include settings, but you must manually change them when going from one environment to another.
• Recognizing sharp, sudden sounds and reducing their level (known as impulse sound reduction)
• Many modern premium hearing aids also feature smartphone connectivity to make discreet adjustments, save settings, and even connect to other electronic devices!

And in general, the more features a hearing aid has, the more expensive it’ll be. Can you get by with a basic hearing aid? Sure, but you’ll also have to deal with its limitations.

Regardless of your budget, the best thing to do before ordering a hearing aid is discuss your hearing loss with your physician. Sure, Hear.com’s consultation might help, but you’ll always want to get your medical provider’s opinion first.

A Note about Your Brain & Hearing

As we mentioned above, your ears collect sound, but it’s your brain that processes them into something you can recognize. So in a very real way, we actually hear with our brains.

As our hearing deteriorates, our brain makes up for this deficiency as well as it can. And the longer you suffer from hearing loss, the more your brain compensates.

But when you get a hearing aid (whether from Hear.com or elsewhere) and are able to hear appropriately again, your brain might have difficulty adjusting. In many instances, readjusting your brain might take therapy sessions through an audiologist (not one through Hear.com, obviously), which can involve patience on your part.

The short story? A hearing aid might help you hear better, but until your brain becomes reaccustomed to hearing well, you might not hear very comfortably.

What about Hear.com’s reputation? Are they a good company to do business with?

How Long Has Hear.com Been in Business?

According to a September 10, 2015 press release, Hear.com was recently founded by a company named Sivantos, who has been in business for more than 100 years and is one of the world’s top manufacturers of hearing aids. In fact, Sivantos claims to “develop and manufacture one out of every four hearing aids being used worldwide.”

Before launching Hear.com, Sivantos strategically purchased audibene.de, who is currently the number one hearing aid retailer in Europe. Now, Sivantos plans to create this same success in the US with Hear.com, by targeting a younger, first-time hearing aid user.

What’s the Bottom Line with Hear.com?

Hear.com is a very new company, so there wasn’t a lot of information available about them at the time of our research. They are backed by the merger of two very successful companies though, who is trying to recreate their European success here in the US.

When it comes down to it, Hear.com almost certainly can help you find a brand name hearing aid that provides all the features you need, within your budget. They also seem to stand behind their services with free, local consultations, and behind their products with a 45-day refund window on deposits.

Only time will tell if Hear.com is as successful as its European sister company, but they seem to be starting out on the right foot.

Have you purchased a hearing aid through Hear.com? Tell us about your experience by writing a review below!