Nagware im Ohr
My father-in-law is staying with us for a few weeks after a hospital stay. Before his hospital stay, he had received a hearing aid test from an audiologist in his area.
The hearing aid has worked well for a few weeks, but now one of the two hearing aids is making a noise at regular short intervals, namely a descending three-tone sequence.
My father-in-law suspects that the battery is dead and the hearing aid complains that the battery will soon be empty, although the charger says otherwise. His nephew-in-law and I look for the instructions on the Internet, because we at least find out that the battery empty noise should be different. We suspect some sort of Bluetooth issue instead, so the device might be constantly pairing and unpairing while making a beeping noise. But that is not confirmed either.
Because we can’t get any further, my father-in-law, nephew-in-law and my husband drive to the acoustician on site the next day to inquire.
It turns out that the signal noise comes from the fact that this is a test device and that’s why the software produces an interfering signal after a few weeks so that you don’t just keep the test device, but are forced to go to the acoustician to unlock it. The acoustician wants to find out whether he can extend the test phase so that my father-in-law can continue to use the hearing aid.
One day later we can pick up the hearing aid. We don’t find out exactly what the acoustician did, but the noise is gone now.
(Anne Schüßler, title inspired by Mia Culpa)