I had never worn hearing aids before and my mild-moderate hearing loss was getting worse. So, because of reviews and cost, I chose Costco hearing aids. I had tried a couple of OTC amplifiers but they did not help me understand speech and loud sounds were too jarring with them. So, I got the Philips 9040 (Oticon) aids from Costco.

I tried them for a few months but overall the sound was awful because:

1. I could not understand people right in front of me when there was a crowd around. So, with many people around, I had to take the aid off to understand my immediate group of people. This happened even on bluetooth phone calls.

2. Loud sounds were jarring. I have loud sound sensitivity and the hearing aids made me nauseous whenever I was around loud people. Oh, and loud distant noises were awful too. Like being able to hear the far off clanking of dishware in restaurants when all I wanted to do was to hear the people next to me. Walking near traffic became overwhelming.

3. All sounds were different. I did not recognize people's voices from people I had known for years. I had to relearn how different people sounded. I also had to relearn the sound of water, fans, etc. Everything sounded flat and it was only when I took off the HAs did the world sound full.

4. Music sounded flat, too. Like listening to sounds recorded with a very low bit rate. My $20 pair of earbuds were so much better sounding. Reading the comments on this subReddit, I guess this is how HAs are meant to be, and I am not the only one.

5. There was no effective noise canceling. If I wanted to hear people in a car that had road noise, I had to remove my HAs. Otherwise, the sounds I heard were mainly road noise with unintelligible speech in the background.

So, I went back a couple of times to the HA specialist at Costco with my complaints and got my HAs tweaked a couple of times. Nothing much improved and in some ways became even worse.

On a whim, I went to a different Costco. The difference was amazing. This HA specialist did an update, and gave my Android app the speech in noise setting. Both settings now make my aids sound 100% better and I can wear them comfortably for longer periods of time. I now actually want to wear them when I go out.

I don't know what to make of my experiences. But, I did want to say that maybe if you are having problems, perhaps another fitter might be helpful.