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The Man Who Built Hearing Aids for 15 Years Has Something to Tell You

Published by Gary Whitfield | Health | Last update: Apr 6 👁 9,847 📖 4 min

My name is Gary Whitfield. For 15 years I worked as a production engineer at one of the largest hearing aid manufacturers in Europe. I'm not going to name them. I still know people there.

 

What I am going to do is tell you what I saw. Because after I left, I started noticing something that made me uncomfortable.

 

People I knew — my dad, my neighbours, people on my street — were either waiting 14 months for the NHS or paying £2,500 to £3,700 at a clinic. And I knew, better than almost anyone, what was actually inside those devices.
 

I couldn't stay quiet about it anymore.

What a hearing aid actually costs to build

I'm going to give you the numbers nobody in this industry wants public.

 

The receiver — the tiny speaker that sits in your ear canal — costs between £12 and £18 wholesale. The microphone, £8 to £14. The digital signal processing chip, the part that actually separates speech from background noise, £40 to £80 depending on specification.

 

Casing, assembly, quality control, packaging. Add another £15 to £20.

 

You're looking at £80 to £130 for a properly built hearing aid. With real components. Real processing. Not an amplifier — an actual medical-grade hearing aid.

 

I know because I built them. Thousands of them. On a production line in a factory. Not in a gleaming clinic. In a factory.

 

So where does the £3,000 go?

This is what I kept asking myself after I left.

 

The device leaves the factory at roughly £90 to £140. By the time it reaches the patient it's £2,143 at Specsavers, £2,914 at Boots, £3,720 at Hidden Hearing.

 

That margin doesn't go back into the technology. I can tell you that with certainty because I worked on the technology. It barely changed year on year. The chips got marginally faster. The casing got marginally smaller. The price to the patient kept going up.

 

The margin goes on the high street locations. The commission-based sales staff. The regional managers and area managers and head offices. The full-page newspaper adverts. The television spots during the evening news.

 

You are paying £3,000 for a distribution network. The hearing aid itself is a small fraction of that.

 

I left the industry because I got tired of knowing this and saying nothing.

 

The NHS option

I want to be fair here. The NHS uses good components. Some of the same suppliers we used in the factory supply the NHS.

 

But the wait is 6 to 18 months. And what you'll get at the end of it is almost certainly a behind-the-ear device — the large beige type with a tube that hooks over your ear. Standard issue. One size fits most.

 

They work. But they're visible, the batteries die constantly, and from what I've seen — about 2 in 5 people stop wearing them within a year. Not because they're broken. Because wearing them every day becomes a battle.

The Amazon problem

Please understand this clearly, because it matters.

 

What Amazon sells are not hearing aids. They are amplifiers. From an engineering standpoint they are completely different devices.

 

An amplifier increases all sound equally. Voice, traffic, background noise, your own breathing — all louder, at the same volume. There is no filtering. No processing. No separation of speech from noise.

 

A real hearing aid contains a digital signal processing chip that analyses the incoming soundscape and adjusts in real time. It pushes background noise down. It lifts voice frequencies. It makes conversation clearer in a noisy room.

 

If you're paying £39 on Amazon, that chip is not in the device. I can tell you that as someone who spent 15 years costing and specifying these components. It is not physically possible at that price.

 

Amazon amplifiers are not just ineffective. They can cause further hearing damage from unfiltered loud sound exposure.

 

If you tried Amazon and gave up, you weren't trying hearing aids.

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What changed

When I left the industry I started paying more attention to what was happening outside it.

In 2025, the rules around direct-to-consumer hearing aids changed in the UK. You no longer needed a GP referral or a clinic appointment. You could buy a properly certified hearing aid the same way you buy reading glasses.

 

I came across a company called Hear It Well, founded by a man called David Taylor. His background was in medical device distribution — he'd spent years supplying components to clinics and knew exactly what the markup structure looked like from the supply side. When his father's hearing deteriorated in his mid-seventies, Taylor did what anyone in his position would do. He priced up the options. NHS wait of over a year. Boots at £2,914. Specsavers at £2,143. And a father who was too proud to wear the big beige behind-the-ear aids anyway.

 

He knew what the components cost. He knew what the margins were. He built a warehouse operation in Stoke-on-Trent, cut out every layer of distribution between factory and customer, and priced it at what it should actually cost.

 

My first assumption was still scepticism. £149.99 for a pair of hearing aids seemed impossible to me based on what I knew about component costs.

 

So I did what any engineer would do. I looked at the specifications properly.

 

Knowles receivers. The same supplier used by the major brands — I recognised the part numbers. Multi-channel digital signal processing. Proper frequency response curves. UKCA certified as a medical device, which means it's gone through the same regulatory inspection process as everything sold in a high street clinic.

 

The components are legitimate. The processing is legitimate. The certification is legitimate.

The only thing missing is the high street shop, the commission salesperson, and the head office in central London.

 

That's where your £2,800 was going.

 

I contacted the company with some technical questions — specific ones, the kind that would expose a marketing operation quickly. The response was detailed, accurate, and fast. These people know what's inside their product.

 

45-day trial. Full return if it doesn't work. Two-year warranty. Rechargeable — no batteries to fumble with every four days.

 

In my assessment, Hear It Well is using components comparable to hearing aids costing ten times more. The markup isn't there because the distribution model isn't there.
 

That's it. That's the whole story.

What I'd tell my own family

My father is 85. When his hearing started going, I knew exactly what I was looking at in terms of his options.

 

I didn't send him to Boots. I know what that markup pays for and it isn't better technology.

 

I didn't put him on an NHS waiting list. 14 months is a long time to miss conversations.

 

He's been wearing Hear It Well for four months. He told me last week it's the best £150 he's ever spent.

 

Coming from an engineer who spent 15 years inside this industry, that means something.
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What others are saying

"Thought my wife had started mumbling. Turns out I'd been missing half of every conversation for three years." — Bernard, 74

 

"Tried the NHS route. Waited 11 months and couldn't get on with them. These took about 20 minutes to get used to." — Derek, 71

 

"My daughter kept turning the telly down. I kept turning it back up. We'd been rowing about it for two years. Problem solved." — Margaret, 69

 

"Paid £2,800 at Hidden Hearing four years ago. Wouldn't say these are worse. Genuinely wouldn't." — Alan, 77

 

"Didn't want anyone to see me wearing them. These sit completely inside the ear. Nobody's noticed in three months." — Pauline, 68

IMPORTANT UPDATE

Since this article was published, Hear It Well has gained tremendous attention and interest. 
The company has reached out to our editorial team to inform us that, for a limited time, they are offering our readers an exclusive 50% discount on Hear It Well. 
Plus, every order comes with a 45-day risk free trial at home, 1 year warranty and free insured shipping.
If you don't experience clearer hearing within 45 days, you can just return it.

 

Check availability

Comments (6)

Oliver_Hayes

06 Mar, 2026 at 1:23 pm

Honestly wish I’d read this sooner. Spent over £500 trying different options that didn’t help at all. This explains things much better than any audiologist I spoke to.
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Janet_London

09 Mar, 2026 at 10:03 am

My neighbour recommended these after struggling for years. Took a chance and I’m glad I did. Not perfect, but for the price I can finally hear conversations again.
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TomB_84

12 Mar, 2026 at 11:53 am
 

Been using them for about a month now. Big difference when watching TV and chatting with friends. Still getting used to them but definitely worth it.
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ElaineW

23 Mar 2026 at 12:10 pm

Was very skeptical at first because of the low cost. But compared to the quotes I got locally, this felt like a no-brainer. So far, so good!
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George_MK

24 Mar, 2026 at 09:11 am

Returned my expensive pair after trying these. Can’t say they’re identical, but for everyday use they do the job just fine. Saved a lot of money.
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Clara_J

27 Mar, 2026 at 12:32 pm
 

Got these for my dad and he hasn’t stopped talking about them since 😂 Says he can hear the birds again in the morning. That alone made it worth it.
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