UPDATE: I had a good experience with "Karleen" at the Hawaii Kai hearing aid center today. I left a number of messages and then called a bit before opening today, and she agreed to find me a loaner and help me today, and she did. So I'm upping the review on Costco hearing aid centers to 3 stars based on that, and will revisit this review again as events warrant. For now, I have an older-version loaner which does work, though it doesn't synch with my other one. It was a bit of a pain to have to drive through the construction delays in Waimanalo both ways to get to a Costco which would help me. I give one star to the Waipio store. As for the Kirkland hearing aids themselves, one of mine has gone bad after a bit over a year, though it is still on warranty. I got the kirkland "signature 7" line which is apparently a rebranded Rexton Trax 42. They now seem to be selling the model 8 instead, which is probably similar, at the slightly lower cost of $1600/pair.
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Decent hearing aids, poor service, though the level of service varies from one costco store to another, apparently based on the personality of the person in charge.
The free hearing test is an excellent deal, as is the initial fitting with kirkland hearing aids. And in theory they offer a super warranty.
However, once you've paid for it, you're largely on your own. I'd thought that it would be handy to have a hearing aid place where I go once every couple months to show anyhow... but no, even to drop off a bad aid for service you need to schedule sometimes WEEKS in advance. And they generally do NOT offer loaner aids, despite having huge numbers of them. And it can take 10+ days until you have to go back, so they must send your broken aid to the mystic orient or something.
The woman (apparently) in charge of the hearing center at the Waipio store is nearly hostile; when buying mine at the hawaii kai store (since they were out of stock at waipio) they had said that I could get them checked or serviced at any costco (I usually go to waipio), but the woman at Waipio tore me a new one and refused, lecturing me. She seems to have a lot of leeway to decide what costco policy is, which so far has always been that I'm Sh*t Outa Luck and should not come in to her store.
So as I sit here with a broken hearing aid playing repeated startup melodies in my right ear - which has been going on for over a month - I'm also looking on ebay for a secondary pair of hearing aids, because - and here's my big point - if anything goes wrong with your costco aids, you're largely on your own.
The woman in charge of the Waipio hearing aid center should be let go, IMO. The others are courteous, but don't have loaners, and the policy means going without a working hearing aid for extended periods. If you life across the street from any costco except Waipio, it might work for you, but if it's a long drive for you bear in mind that they don't care about wasting your time, just getting your initial money slapped down. read more
