Hearing Device

[RocW]

I saw an advert in The Times on Saturday for a "hearing device" which costs about £20. Which? reckons that a hearing aid can cost several thousand pounds which makes me wonder (a) Is "hearing device" something different from "hearing aid"? and (b) Is it worth spending £20 just to find out? I am not very deaf, just getting older but sometimes I need to turn up the treble/reduce the bass on the soundbar connected to the TV.
has anyone tried one of these things and is it worth it?

[Sqad]

I haven't tried and I don' t intend to as a hearing device just accentuates sound both wanted and unwanted. You are describing a deafness known as presbycusis ( deafness of the aged) and this is mainly a high tone deafness, the lower tones being unaffected.

NHS aids are more selective in tone accentuation and free.

Don't waste your money.

[pusskin]

Can book free hearing tests at Boot chemist, if you book an appointment.
You will also get 120 points for going to them.
Mr P needs a hearing test as I keep having to turn telly up.

[trt]

I was given one by a rep who came to my house for a hearing test.

They are crap, but the hearing aids he showed me were only £2.500 to £3,500, so went to NHS for free ones.

[alavahalf]

When my wife was 5 years old she had German measles and her ear drum became infected. She was admitted to hospital where they operated on her ear ... the only problem was they operated on the wrong ear. It was done in the days where you didn't complain, you were just thankful.
Ever since then she has had to wear 2 hearing aids. Some time ago she seen one of these adverts in the paper for a tiny hearing aid for just a few pounds. She has always had NHS hearing aids and with the thought of having smaller less obvious aids she was drawn in. The salesman told her she had the hearing of a 90 year old and these would change her life.
Just over a £1000 was paid for each hearing aid and sure enough they did fit right inside the ear. But within the year she was having problems, we believe through the lack of ventilation in her ear, The company were notified whereby another salesman turned up and told her they her hearing level had changed and she would need new hearing aids at the cost of another £2000 or more.
We then found out that the hearing aids they sold her were not adjustable to adapt to her new level of hearing.
She didn't believe this and said she would think about it. In the meantime she went to a local hearing shop where they did a hearing test and were very honest and told her about the new NHS digital aids that were newly available.
We arranged a visit to our local ENT where they said "Yes they did have new smaller digital aids, but they weren't availableto everyone yet". On this ocassion I had gone along with my wife and I suggested that "As she is only in this predicament due to a NHS blunder, perhaps they should see their way into making sure that she gets the best they can offer"
They quickly agreed and the latest NHS aids were issued.
The wife is over the moon with them and now she can hear a sparrow f@rt in a tree down the road.

[bert_h]

Private vendors of hearing aids will be getting more and more desperate for revenue over the next few years. The modern NHS hearing aids are absolutely streets and streets ahead of the clunky old things you might remember from a generation ago - and they are personally adjusted and calibrated to cure your precise hearing problem, so it's no longer the "one size fits all" approach that you might have expected, either. Oh yes, and they're completely free . . .

[Canary42]

////You are describing a deafness known as presbycusis ( deafness of the aged) and this is mainly a high tone deafness, the lower tones being unaffected////

I just love the odd bits of useful info' I pick up on AB. This one is new to me and explains why at 72 I find the female actors more difficult to understand in the theatre nowadays. Thanks sqad.

[Canary42]

My late Mum dumped an expensive private digital hearing aid for a free NHS one which she found infinitely superior.

[Sqad]

Canary....no need to thank me....;-)
With presbycusis, deafness is not the problem, the main difficulty is understanding what they are saying. If they would speak, slowly and precisely, then one would not need a hearing aid, but they don't. they just shout louder, which makes understanding much worse.

You could use subtitles whilst watching TV.

[RocW]

Thank you to everyone who answered. I particularly liked "presbycusis". In the right position on a Scrabble board that could be worth quite a lot! I must go and have my hearing tested. Just one thing: this bit about female actors being hard to understand. I've been married for nearly 45 years and I still don't understand my wife...