A friend who installs loops complains they are largely pointless, because in practice nobody with a hearing aid ever wants to use them. Apparently the quality of a good hearing aid magnifying the audio in the room is substantially better than an induction loop.

No hearing aid magnification comes close if the induction loop is properly installed and integrated with the PA system. With an induction loop it's as if the microphone is directly connected to the hearing aid.

Yes, but you only have the PA on that, not the ambient.

Yes, it's amazing how often hearing assistance systems are either unusable (due to bad sound, e.g. hiss or distortion or volume issues) or just flat-out don't work here in the UK.

> ... those that have hearing aids often complain ...

When I do sound at church, I always wish they would complain more. I assumed it was working, but one day found that the power cable for the loop system was not connected. I plugged it back in, and spoke to a hearing aid user about it and they said it hadn't been working for weeks. Why they (or all the other hearing aid users) hadn't mentioned it before I don't know...