HearingLife review: Stay away from this one 6

In the world of print media, it is all too easy for people to represent only partial information they want to emphasize - half or mistruths. I would like to counter the posted negative representation of Hearing Life, created hurtfully by someone who has taken a very small dissection of an online job posting and attempts to manipulate us with out-of-context spin. I instead can offer a quite-the-contrary, outstanding recommendation for a company that focuses first and foremost on extensive patient education, careful testing, product offerings to match detailed evaluations, and exceptional ongoing patient care. In my experience, Hearing Life professionals work diligently to first help those with hearing loss (along with close family members and friends) understand the full picture of his or her individual circumstances. They then proceed to offer the latest (yet affordable) solutions to enhance and enrich daily living, ultimately granting increased sound, clarity, conversation, social interaction once lost. This is always the highest priority for Hearing Life – I have never experienced anything less. And yes, as part of a retail organization committed to successfully continuing and expanding their valued patient services, they sell, and in my opinion, have earned the very clear right to keep doing it.
~ Pleased to serve up the real Hearing Life mission and truth

I am an Audiometrist for Hearing Life in Australia and am disgusted that we would be reffered to as "sales people". All of us have trained very hard to provide professional hearing advice to our clients. There is not one Audiometrist or Audiologist i know that would not put the well being of the client first, its what we do. Alot of client that see us at Hearing Life are on a pension therefore they are eligable for free hearing aid services via the government hearing program scheme.My best advice to people reading this negative feedback is go and see for yourself, make up your own mind re: the service we provide. Audiometrists and Audiologists train for 6 years not to "become sales people', but because we want to assist and educate people on what hearing loss is about, how to prevent it and what to do to help yourselves or others that you care about. I hope this post puts your mind at ease.

How can you not be suspicious towards HearingLife when they post online ads like this one promising to have magical cures for tinnitus. Shady marketing tactics.

I'm sure the above people in this post are real professionals but it's clear to me that the group's sales techniques aren't.

As a hearing professional in Australia, I can attest that Hearing Life in Australia has gone to hell in recent years. Once upon a time, HL was a great place to work and the focus was purely on helping the hearing impaired improve their quality of life. In addition, up until a few years ago the national management of HL actually cared about and respected their employees. The above ended when HL was bought by WDH. Since then, HL Australia staff have been bombarded with the message of sell, sell, sell. This mentality has been reinforced by numerous sales training days whereby the training is noting more than how to separate clients from their money. The most notable example of this is the ATRT (All The Right Things) philosophy which is wholly focused on getting clients to purchase hearing aids whether they wish to or not. Pensioners in Australia are entitled to receive quality hearing aids at no cost to themselves and paying for advanced hearing aids is optional (called "Top-Up"). Most providers report that they fit about 20% of their pensioner clients with Top-Up aids. HL Australia expects its clinicians to fit 50% of their pensioner clients with Top-Up as an absolute minimum. The clients not being able to afford to purchase Top-Up aids is not considered by HL management to be a reason to fit less than 50% of pensioners with Top-Up hearing aids. Indeed, most of the sales training HL Australia is centred around getting people to make financial commitments they cannot afford.

Although the state management of HL Australia is excellent and can see things from the branch point of view, this doesn't improve the national management. To put it simply, the national management of HL Australia could not manage an ant farm let alone a national company. Not only is the national management of HL Australia inflicted with a severe case of Ivory Tower syndrome, they don't give two hoots about their staff or their staff's opinions. HL Australian national management appears to be little more than an employment scheme for anyone too incompetent to get a job anywhere else. Not only that but HL Australia's management is so bloated that the branch staff (who actually earn management's wages for them) have to work massively hard to meet unreasonable productivity targets just so the idiots in national management can afford to eat. To describe HL Australia as top heavy is an understatement of biblical proportions.

Quite frankly, putting up with the national management of HL Australia is the worst part of working for HL. Putting up with complete and utter calendar mismanagement that kills branch morale and productivity has become commonplace. State meetings used to be productive affairs that involved discussions on case studies and state issues. Nowadays, state meetings are about how it is the fault of branch staff that national management make ridiculous decisions that make running an efficient branch impossible. When clinicians are not hearing about that, they have to listen to the hysterical HR woman tell them how to do their jobs (which she would not have a clue about). And one should not think that just because state gatherings are called meetings means that branch staff get to have a say. Far from it; voicing an opinion contrary to what the national management of HL Australia think is a good way to wind up being "counselled" by the previously mentioned psychotic HR woman. You can imagine what "counselled" means for yourself.

Like I said earlier, HL Australia used to be a great place to work and a great place for hearing impaired clients to seek help. Not any more. Would I advise any prospective clinician to work at HL Australia? No. Would I recommend a friend of mine receive services from HL? No. My own mother recently required hearing care. I arranged for her to be seen by a competitor. That basically sums up the reality of HL Australia.

My wife and I went there because they offered a oven toaster which I could use. We both went through their exam but I never got specifically what they offered. The other thing that occurred to us is that anyone's hearing would improve with amplification. It is a come on marketing ploy.

she broke the battery holder and they they sent it out to be fixed , when I went in ti pick it up I asked how much was it the girl at the at the desk said 300.00but when I went back to the room to pick she told me It was 500.00 and they are still brook the battery door is still broken.

Virto V30-10 1627A3XL