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Hearing aids advertised as "cheap" hearing aids usually mean that the advertised price is below the competitive retail selling price of a certain hearing aid model.
For us at http://hearingaidscentral.com, the words "cheap hearing aids" mean quality hearing aids manufactured in the USA and costing between 50% and 70% of the cost of brand name hearing aids. So why choose a cheap hearing aid model from us that is not from a well-know manufacturer? For the most part, all of the components for all hearing aids world-wide come from a small number of manufacturers - i.e. the microphones, the receivers, and the amplifiers. The only difference in a brand-name hearing aid an one of our cheap hearing aids may be the DSP (digital Signal Processing) chip - there are about six DSP chip manufacturers world-wide. The manufacturing costs will be the same unless a manufacturer has a highly automated production line in which case the cost per unit to manufacture will be less that other manufacturers. We can purchase the top-of-the-line hearing aid components for between $25 and $100. Add into that the cost of the DSP chip ($80 - $20 depending on volume). Add in the labor costs and you get a pretty good idea how much it costs to manufacture a hearing aid anywhere in the world.
We at http://hearingaidscentral.com add in a resonable markup to sell our discount hearing aids directly to you, the consumer, by bypassing the traditional audiology distribution network where all the markups occur. | 
