Summary
Mrs C complained that the board refused to provide her with batteries for her privately purchased hearing aid and was unhappy with the way they dealt with her complaint. (They had previously supplied batteries for her old hearing aid, which was also privately purchased.)
Our investigation found that, when Mrs C replaced her hearing aid, the battery required was a different size. The board told her that they could no longer supply batteries because they only provide batteries that fit NHS hearing aids, which only use the same size of battery as Mrs C's previous hearing aid. We considered this to be reasonable and did not uphold this complaint.
Mrs C also complained that her complaint was not properly handled. She said that someone she had previously complained about was involved in providing information for the board's response, and the responses to her complaint were delayed and contradictory. We found that it was appropriate for the person concerned to have been involved in the complaint response, as the complaint was about policy for which the individual had responsibility. We did, however, uphold the complaint about delay as we agreed that responses were delayed and contained contradictory information, and made a recommendation to the board about this.
Recommendation We recommended that the board: • apologise to Mrs C for the failings identified.
Related reading
View Decision Report 201103753 as a PDF (21.91 KB) Updated: March 13, 2018