In this episode of Sound Advice, audiologist Doug Leonard dives into the world of hearing aid scams. Doug discusses the various deceptive practices used in hearing aid advertisements, including false performance claims, fake reviews, and misleading online articles. By understanding these scams, you can make more informed decisions about your hearing health. We also discuss the importance of genuine product reviews and why you should be wary of too-good-to-be-true money-back guarantees. Doug shares insights from Dr. Cliff, a popular audiologist on YouTube, who has exposed some of these misleading claims. Learn how ASI offers demo trials for hearing aids to ensure customers get the best possible care without falling for scams.
This is Sound Advice with audiologist Doug Leonard back in the studio with us here, and we're talking about today hearing aid scams. And this is like any industry, Doug. There are scams going on all over the place, deceptive advertising. In fact, you've got a great YouTube video that you found. Dr. Cliff is his name. He does a lot of stuff with audiology and hearing aids. He ran through some of the biggest false claims, which I watched and I thought was very, very helpful.
SPEAKER 02 :
it is i mean you know and you want patients to be when they're coming in to be educated and so you have to everything every ad that you see you know i when i look in an ad for whatever product it is i think about what's in it for the person that made that ad does this seem like a truthful straightforward honest ad or is it just a way to get me into the store to buy something and you know dr cliff kind of details all those he does a whole bunch of different audiology related videos and you can look them up on youtube You know, the first one was just false claims about hearing aid performance. There are all kinds of ads that advertise, you know, $39 hearing aids. There was one with Lee Majors, the bionic man who used to advertise on TV. I think William Shatner might have done one too. I don't remember who. And they'll say that these $39 hearing aids that you can buy are just as good as the multi-thousand dollar pairs of hearing aids that you can buy from your local provider. Of course they're not. Dr. Cliff actually did a YouTube video one time about one of the famous ones called Nano. And the performance of those was certainly not as good as a prescriptive set of hearing aids.
SPEAKER 01 :
Anytime you hear the word just as good, I'd be a little leery of that. Number two was online articles that promote hearing aids, too. There can be a lot of deception there.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, and they kind of disguise themselves as research articles or literature that is supposedly making it sound like it's a medical research-based device, and it's just an ad again for some specific hearing aid. There's one I've seen that talks about the special German hearing aid. Well, the German hearing aid is made by a company called Siemens or Signia. Signia is a good brand of hearing aid. We use them sometimes as well, but there's nothing special about Signia. It's a good brand of hearing aid, and people ask about that quite a bit.
SPEAKER 01 :
Fake reviews was my favorite one because I've seen this before. You look at, oh, they've got all these five-star reviews. It's got to be great.
SPEAKER 02 :
Yeah, and almost all of us anymore, we do look at reviews, and it is important. We ask patients to leave reviews for us, good or bad, however their experience was. So I get skeptical if I see all five star reviews as a service provider in whatever industry, whether it's hearing care or anything else, you're not going to make everybody happy. So if everything's a five star review, I get a little skeptical.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. And money, no risk money back guarantees. If you're dealing with hearing aids, you got through the mail. I guarantee you there's not going to be any fun in that in trying to redeem that.
SPEAKER 02 :
Well, it's going to be a process that is going to be pretty daunting for people to try to get a refund. I can almost guarantee that. You know, one of the things that we do at ASI is we do demos. So as patients are coming in and if they have hearing loss and they could benefit from amplification, We do test drives, and we allow them to do a demo with hearing aids. So it really kind of makes the neat worry about money-back guarantees and things non-existent because they know what they're getting ahead of time.
SPEAKER 01 :
If you could try some of these that you get with these great discounts and these special offers, if you could try them, you'd realize they're not such a special offer after all. But you do get great quality products with ASI. Doug, what's the number here in case somebody wants to set up? Maybe try a demo for a different hearing aid. Yep, I would love to see them at 792-5933. Give them a call and check it out. You'll understand what quality hearing service is all about when you deal with the great folks at ASI, Audiological Services of Iowa.
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