Hearing Life called my 89 year old father to set up an appointment to do a checkup on his 6 month old hearing aids. He was skeptical and he asked me call and find out more. The person I talked with on the phone knew my father’s medical history (relating to his hearing loss), his address, phone number (obviously) and other private medical information. I was even more skeptical they knew so much, but daddy wanted to have his ‘ears’ adjusted so we kept the appointment.
I wasn’t impressed with the cheap furniture in the waiting room, the lack of space in the patient rooms and generally was not comfortable with anything happening in the 2 hours we were there. The first person we saw did a hearing test. He was pleasant. This man looked at how daddy’s hearing aids were sitting on his ears and offered to ‘shave them down’ to fit better. Up until this point we were not feeling anything shady or unprofessional was going on, I was more or uncomfortable with the lack of any kind of medical office feel to this store front suite.
When the first man took daddy’s hearing aids to complete the adjustments he suggested, another man in a long white coat (aka, doctor’s coat) came in to get us to ‘go over the hearing test results’. My BS alarm lit right up. First of all, the guy was NOT old enough to be an actual doctor, there were no college or accreditation documents anywhere in sight and he just had a general salesman type vibe. Daddy and I sat down on the side of the desk opposite the ‘hearing aid specialist’. This H.A.S. suggested that while daddy’s hearing aids were being adjusted he wanted to make sure daddy could hear everything that was going on, so the H.A.S. had an ‘extra set’ of hearing aids for daddy to borrow. Long story short, this guy tried really really hard to sell us his $7,000 hearing aids. I asked him about his accreditations / education, etc. He responded with “I am a licensed hearing aid specialist”. I am not personally familiar with this kind of license, so I kept the conversation going …. He is not an audiologist or an ENT doctor, or anything medically licensed at all. He didn’t even know the difference between an audiologist and an ENT doctor. (I am fully aware of the difference as I have several children who have seen both kinds of doctors during their lives. In addition, I have a bachelor’s degree in sociology with an emphasis on the elderly, more specifically issues pertaining to elderly women, being fully aware of elder scams is my thing). Basically this guy puts on a white coat, giving an unsuspecting elder the illusion of being a medical professional. The current elder population generally does what a doctor asks them to do, because the doctor knows best. Hearing Life is taking this almost guaranteed response of an elder and ran with it. Luckily daddy had me with him and I called BS pretty quickly, saving him a LOT of money. I wish I had been able to help the other woman in the office while we were there. [redacted] I will continue telling this story to anyone who will listen to hopefully shut these jokers down, or at the very least give a potential ‘patient’ a heads up about what to expect. Their [redacted] license should be taken away, indeed!