What is a Price Guarantee? How do Providers differ? How to choose a Provider.
Hearing aid providers are generally not disclosing info that consumers should know. Check out the blog about what’s wrong with the industry today, in which, among other things, the consumer author describes the industry is posing as health care providers when they don’t do diagnostic testing, and sell a basic screening as a free test. Then there’s the whole issue of pricing. You can’t get a straight answer on the price of a hearing aid when you call most providers who would rather first put you through another hearing test. That’s not even necessary in most cases. Many providers give a price guarantee should be a guarantee that it is the lowest price. And if you find the same hearing aid elsewhere for an even lower price, that guarantee should be honoured by then meeting their price.
However, the price guarantee is being used by hearing care providers to raise their prices and hope that nobody checks around, force people to do all the legwork and running around to look for a better price, while charging everyone the higher inflated amount and thereby over-charging everyone as standard practice. But if people check around, usually meaning that they have to go in person to clinics, get a hearing test and then a quote that is often not official or written, then they will honour the lower price (meanwhile still overcharging everyone else).
That sounds shady to me. It is a carnival act and you’re the clown.
My standard practice is to always give FULL DISCLOSE and HAVE FIDUCIARY DUTY TO MY PATIENTS and nobody and nothing else, going above and beyond what is called for by industry and governmental professional regulation.
Ask other providers to disclose their ownership, partnerships, and whom they have fiduciary duty to or to disclose prices point blank without beating around the bush and you’ll see what I mean.
When it comes to hearing care, it’s not what you but it’s whom you buy it from, It’s not the technology but what they can do with it. Choose an honest, direct and credible provider: look for disclosure, accessibility, transparency, experience, qualifications, expertise.