What it looks like

The product page is beautiful. The photos are studio quality, the copy is confident, and the price is a fraction of a clinic’s. What it does not have is a spec sheet. No frequency response. No maximum output. No battery chemistry. No model number you can search. And when you scroll to the bottom, there is a contact form and nothing else. No company name, no address, no phone.

The listing may exist on a marketplace under a brand that is a string of consonants, with a “store” that opened a few months ago and sells a phone charger, a dog harness and a hearing aid.

Why it works on us

Because the page is designed to be judged on feel, and it feels fine. Most buyers have never read a hearing aid spec sheet and would not know what to look for, so its absence does not register. And a contact form feels like contact. It is only when you need a human, to fix a whistle or return a device, that you discover the company was a web page.

What a real product tells you

• Maximum output. Hearing aids publish a maximum output level, often as OSPL90, the sound pressure produced with a 90 decibel input. It tells you whether the device can hurt you. A seller who cannot give you this number is selling something that has never been measured.
• Frequency response. A curve or a range showing which pitches the device amplifies and by how much. Hearing loss is rarely flat, so a device that cannot describe its shape cannot fit your loss.
• The company. A registered business name, a physical address, and an FDA establishment registration you can look up. Real manufacturers are proud of these. Fake ones cannot produce them.
• A support line that is answered. Not a form. A phone, with a human, in a time zone you can reach.
• A model number. Something you can search that returns the manufacturer, not just the listing.

How to spot it in ten seconds

1. Footer first. Address, company name, phone. Map the address. A mailbox store or a residential street is a warning.
2. Search the company name with the word “complaints” and separately with “reviews.” No results at all is as bad as bad results: it means the name is new, or invented.
3. Ask for the spec sheet. One email: what is the maximum output and frequency range? A manufacturer answers. A dropshipper sends marketing copy.
4. Check the marketplace store. Opening date, other products, and whether the reviews describe this product or a different one.
5. Look for the FDA establishment registration. If the company claims to make hearing aids and is not in the FDA database, it does not make hearing aids.

A real device comes with numbers. A real company comes with a door. A listing comes with neither.

What to do instead

• Buy from companies you can find on a map and in the FDA database. Every product in our Real Choices passes that check before anything else.
• Keep the spec sheet, or the email refusing to provide one. Either is evidence if you need a refund.
• If you have already bought, test the return process immediately, while the window is open. See our article on return traps for what to expect.
• Send us the listing. A seller with no address is the easiest Case File to write, because there is nobody to respond.

Case Files

Products and sellers we have documented using this tactic are linked here as Case Files are published. If you have been caught by it, send us the listing, the emails and your order details. Dated screenshots are the most useful thing you can send.

Evaluated by Scott West. Data scientist. 40 years of hearing loss. Method: How We Evaluate.

Sources

Every claim above rests on a public record or a named organisation. Read them yourself.

• FDA Establishment Registration and Device Listing database
• National Council on Aging: OTC hearing aid scams
• State of Michigan consumer alert: over-the-counter hearing aids