First, this post might look like a promotion at a glance, but it’s actually a completely personal review — technically not “self-funded,” but “mom-funded and mom-bought.”
My mom said that while listening to the Sunday sermon at church, her hearing aids suddenly started cutting in and out. So I made an appointment with the hearing-aid center for her,
and when she went in, they diagnosed the cause of the problem right away.
My mom uses Phonak’s waterproof “Audéo Lumity” model, and I heard that she recently received a firmware update. (Firmware isn’t something users can easily install like an app — it’s software built into the device itself, so a specialist has to update it manually. I’m not 100% sure if what she got was a firmware update, but she did get some kind of update during her recent visit.)
The person who helped her — I’m not sure whether to call him an audiologist or a hearing-aid specialist — was the same person we met when my mom first bought her hearing aids. Even back then, I remember thinking he seemed very professional and genuinely cool.
People who go in for hearing-aid consultations often don’t know much about hearing aids, and many don’t even know what they should be asking. So (based on my experience at another store before visiting this one) some places simply jump straight to recommending the most expensive model.
The ENT doctor told us that something around 1.5 million won for a pair is already considered good quality, but the first place we went to immediately showed us a 5-million-won model.
But the person at Nanum Hearing Aid (Incheon–Bucheon branch) seemed to study psychoacoustics, and he clearly understood the engineering/acoustics side as well. He really felt like someone who’s consistently growing in his field, and I remember the first consultation being nearly two hours long — incredibly thorough. And when we ourselves tried to buy the most expensive model, he actually recommended a cheaper, previous-generation model instead...!
Walking out after the consultation, I thought, “Wow... what an amazing profession...”
He explained my mom’s hearing-aid issue like this: the device is designed to automatically reduce volume when sounds above a certain level come in. Since church sermons use amplification and tend to be quite loud, the hearing aids probably reduced the loud input too quickly — which made it feel like the sound was cutting in and out. He said that’s the most likely explanation.
I heard that and immediately thought, “Of course. That makes total sense.”
Whether it’s hospitals or hearing-aid centers, having one trustworthy professional you can rely on makes life so much easier. If something happens, you can simply think, “I’ll just go to that person,” and the anxiety disappears.