Within this study we have examined the particular hearing complaints of patients being considered for a cochlear implant and the specific benefits/shortcomings experienced by implanted patients using open‐ended questionnaires. As we expected, the difficulty of hearing general conversation was the most common individual hearing complaint. However, 45% of complaints were concentrated in the ‘psychosocial’ category, which was significantly higher than that found among general audiological rehabilitation patients. The average number of benefits listed by patients having implants was significantly higher than that of the shortcomings. Moreover, the main benefits listed were focused on the acoustical and psychological factors, e.g. ‘environmental sound awareness’, ‘general conversation easier’ and ‘feeling of self‐confidence’. The main shortcomings were related to the acoustical and practical areas, e.g. hearing difficulty in noisy background, processor being cumbersome.