Hearing aid disappointment

My husband tried out another hearing aid. (He went through this process a little over a year ago.) Yesterday he returned it to Beltone.  It just didn't help enough to pay over $7,000 for it. 

The good news is that his hearing is the same as it was two years ago. The bad news is that he cannot hear "S" at all, and on word lists he misunderstands a third of the words.  We tested him with and without the hearing aids, and the results were the same. 

It's possible that the aids helped a little in a crowded restaurant, where background noise is a problem. But the difference was too tiny to quantify.

For some word lists - see the tables in the appendix here and read this.