Hearing Aid Repairs
Gone quiet? Whistling? Crackling in and out? Most hearing-aid faults are small, common and fixable. If we fitted your aids, looking after them is part of the service — bring them in. If they came from somewhere else, give us a call first and we’ll tell you honestly whether we can help.
Nine times out of ten, a hearing aid that has “died” hasn’t broken at all. It has simply become blocked, damp or worn. Hearing aids live in a warm, humid ear canal for twelve hours a day and quietly collect wax, skin and moisture the whole time — and the parts that suffer first are the cheap, replaceable ones.
That is genuinely good news. It means the fix is usually a five-minute job with a fresh wax filter or a new tube, not a fortnight without your hearing. It is also why we’d always rather you brought an aid in than gave up on it and put it in a drawer.
Most of this happens in the chair, with you in it:
If an aid has an internal fault, we send it to the manufacturer’s repair lab. For aids that are outside their warranty, the manufacturer charges at one of two levels — a minor repair, which covers most repairs, or, occasionally, a major repair. We’ll tell you which level applies before anything goes ahead.
Try a fresh battery (or a full charge) and check the dome and filter for a visible plug of wax. If that fixes it, you’ve saved yourself a trip. If it doesn’t, bring the aid, the charger and any spare domes with you — it helps us find the fault faster.
Our first job is looking after the people we’ve fitted, so if you’re one of our patients your aftercare, cleaning and repairs are exactly what we’re here for. If your aids came from another practice or from online, we may still be able to help with the simple things — but give us a call with the make and model first, and we’ll tell you honestly whether it’s worth coming in rather than have you make a wasted trip.
We can help with NHS-issued aids for routine things like re-tubing and cleaning. Anything that needs a new mould, a replacement aid or a change to the NHS prescription has to go back through your NHS audiology department — we’re not able to replace NHS moulds, and we’ll tell you plainly which is which.
There’s never a hard sell attached to a repair. If your current aids are working well for you, the right advice is to keep them working — and that’s the advice you’ll get.
Four habits that prevent most of the repairs we see.
A dry tissue or cloth over the aid and dome when you take them out. Never water, never alcohol wipes, never a cotton bud pushed into the sound outlet.
If yours takes batteries, leave the door open overnight. It lets moisture out and stops the contacts corroding — the single cheapest thing you can do.
Every four to eight weeks for most people, sooner if you make a lot of wax. Waiting until the aid goes silent means going without in the meantime.
Not on a radiator, not in a steamy bathroom, not in a car windscreen in July. Out before showering, swimming and hairspray.
Check the dome and the wax filter first — a plug of wax completely blocking the sound outlet is by far the most common cause, and it can look like almost nothing to the naked eye. If a fresh filter doesn’t bring it back, bring it in; the next most likely culprit is the receiver, which we can usually swap.
Sometimes, but not always — and we’ll be straight with you about it. A manufacturer may have stopped supporting an older model with spare parts, or an aid may simply be beyond economical repair, where the cost of putting it right is more than it is worth. Where that is the case we’ll tell you plainly, rather than have you spend good money after bad.
The best thing is to give us a call on 01709 437250 and we’ll talk it through. Depending on the aid and the fault, we might ask you to pop in or we might book you a slot — we decide it case by case, so you’re not left waiting or making a trip that turns out not to be needed.
Usually not. Constant whistling is nearly always one of two things: a build-up of wax in the ear canal bouncing sound back out, or an aid that needs re-programming. The wax we can check and clear — that’s a wax-removal job rather than a repair. If the ears are clear, the re-programming is done by the practice that fitted the aid.
Possibly — but ring us with the make and model before you travel and we’ll tell you straight away. Some online and direct-to-consumer aids are locked to the seller’s own software, which limits what anyone else can do with them, so we’d rather be honest about that up front than have you make a wasted trip.
Then we will say so, explain why, and leave the decision with you. We fit all seven leading brands, so there is no commercial reason for us to steer you toward one maker over another — and no reason at all to replace something that is working.
Book a repair or service appointment — whatever the make, and wherever you bought it.
