Many of us have become accustomed to purchasing online. It is convenient, time-saving, and frequently money-saving as well.
The contribution of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich to dealing with Israel’s cost of living problem last February, by allowing Israeli residents to import up to $130 worth of products from abroad free of VAT, further increased online purchases in Israel.
As a result, Chinese online sellers like TEMU, SHEIN, and AliExpress, and other foreign online sellers like Amazon and iHerb, greatly increased their sales to Israel, with which Israel Post is finding it increasingly difficult to cope.
Most online sales websites serve a single store or chain, and frequently offer their products online at a discount. There are other online websites that serve as “marketplaces,” where a store or company does not only sell its own products, but enables other stores or companies to use their online infrastructures to sell their own products, without taking responsibility for the actual sale and distribution or the quality of the products sold.
Yet others use their online websites to sell their in-store products as well as products that they do not sell in their stores. In this case, they act themselves as the retailers of all the products they offer for sale online. In Israel, the Super-Pharm Online website is a marketplace, while that of Shufersal is of the latter type.
I recently ordered a small car vacuum cleaner, after discovering that all the car-washing installations in gas stations in my neighborhood do not clean the inside of the cars. Until recently, I used to wash my car myself, but where I currently live, this is impossible.
I searched the web for what I was looking for, and one of the first advertisements to catch my eye was the Super-Pharm Online website. Since I occasionally order products from this site, I decided to order the vacuum cleaner that it offered, which cost NIS 169 plus NIS 29 for delivery. The device was sold by an outside salesman, who advertises hundreds of small items on the Super-Pharm Online website.
When the parcel finally arrived, the parts of the vacuum cleaner were thrown into a simple brown cardboard box, on which was printed MADE IN CHINA, a simple drawing of the product, and “model number LT-113CT.” However, there was no indication of the producer’s name or the product’s brand name. I had ordered the device in black, but received one in white. The users’ instructions were in Chinese, with something barely readable printed in English in letters that measure 1mm.
Watch your back when shopping online
According to Israeli law, foreign electric products sold in Israel must include instructions in Hebrew. In addition, imported products sold in Israel must also bear the name of the producer and/or the importer, neither of which appeared on the product I had ordered nor on the box it arrived in.
I couldn’t help wondering whether perhaps the law in Israel has turned in the eyes of many into a negligible recommendation...
After searching the web, I found an identical product on sale in Lithuania and Russia, at about a third of the price I had paid. In Beirut, it is on sale for $12. At the Chinese marketplace TEMU I found it for NIS 83 (including delivery), and at AliExpress for NIS 75. So why did I pay close to NIS 200? My fault – I should have done my research before ordering the vacuum cleaner, not after receiving it.
Incidentally, the American marketplace Amazon had apparently sold this vacuum cleaner in the past. I was surprised to discover that Amazon sold a nearly identical product to that sold on TEMU and AliExpress, but apparently a majority of the products sold on Amazon these days originate in China, and it is said that Chinese merchants account for around half of the traders on the American marketplace.
With the help of a Chinese friend, I managed to get the vacuum cleaner I had purchased to work. However, I decided to contact Super-Pharm Online to tell them that apparently the product sold on their website does not correspond to the requirements of Israeli law, and that this is not exactly respectable.
When I finally got hold of Super-Pharm customer service on the phone, they would not put me through to someone relevant from Super-Pharm Online, though they promised the issue would be passed on to someone in charge of the relations with its outside sellers.
They did, however, put me in touch with someone from the store that had sold and sent me the vacuum cleaner. Though the person who got in touch with me was polite and said he was there to help, he did not seem to understand what I was talking about. He got into an argument with me about why I wanted to know the product’s brand name.
All I can suggest is that if you buy products online from outside sellers, be mindful and do not assume that the marketplace owner has carefully checked out the products before placing them on his website.
I shall go on looking for a car washer that also cleans the inside of the cars it washes...
The writer has written journalistic and academic articles, as well as several books, on international relations, Zionism, Israeli politics, and parliamentarism. From 1994 to 2010, she worked at the Knesset Library and the Knesset Research and Information Center.