When to Seek Professional Help for Hearing Aid Repairs

Hearing aids can quickly become an important part of our daily lives, especially if you rely on them for daily tasks such as work or communicating with friends and family members. However, hearing aids aren’t infallible. They are electronic devices much like our smartphones or computers and that means they’re susceptible to damage.

Some common hearing aid faults include no sound output, sound cutting out, distorted sounds or even feedback. Sometimes, hearing aids can experience physical damage as well, such as the shell cracking due to temperature changes or if you accidentally drop them and it breaks the circuits inside. So when should you seek professional help from an audiologist for help with your hearing aids?

Are Your Hearing Aids in Working Condition?

If your hearing aids aren’t in working condition, then it’s important to speak to an audiologist immediately to seek help with hearing aid repairs. Unless you have a spare hearing aid to wear, such as an older one, then you need to get a replacement as soon as possible so that it doesn’t affect your regular activities.

Is There Physical Damage to Your Hearing Aids?

Physical damage could include a cracked shell, broken clips and so on. Anything that physically affects your hearing aids should be repaired as soon as possible, even if they are still working. While you can temporarily fix issues with glue or tape, it’s much better to solve the issue as soon as possible by speaking with an audiologist. This is because physical damage to the body of the hearing aids makes it more vulnerable to internal damage. For instance, dropping your hearing aids for a second time could reveal the internals which will be more to repair than just the shell.

Are There Intermittent Sound-Related Problems?

Sound-related issues can range from things like feedback noises, low sound output, no sound occasionally or random cutouts. Sound-related issues could be an issue of the hardware being broken, but it can also be a configuration issue. Before you take your hearing aids to an audiologist, it’s worth checking the manual that it came with to see if there is a setting that you can change to try and fix the issue. There may be a troubleshooting section in the manual that you can use to diagnose the issue.

If the problem is something that you can fix, then you won’t need to take it to the audiologist. Your audiologist may also walk you through some troubleshooting steps if you contact them.

However, if you’re not confident about changing the settings or resetting them to try and fix your hearing aids, then it’s best to take it to an audiologist. If the problem isn’t something that can be solved by fixing the settings or changing profiles, then it’s likely a hardware issue that needs to be replaced. In this case, you’ll either get a replacement from your audiologist, or they’ll replace certain parts so that it works again.