Israeli Attorney Launches Campaign Against Overcharging
Shopping in Israel can be an intensely irritating experience. There’s the line-jumping, the willingness of checkout staff to keep customers waiting while they chat with each other or on cell phones, and the hard-sell for things you don’t need just before you pay. Then there’s the overcharging – not the while-you’re-not-looking kind, but the we’re-waving-it-in-your-face-but-you-can’t-protest kind.
In the States, you pay the price displayed in the store. If something is $9.99 you get your penny coin as change. But in Israel, while things are commonly marked 9.99 shekels, 99.95 shekels, etc., the coins needed for change don’t exist. The smallest denomination of coin is 0.10 shekel, so you often end up paying more than you should.
Sure, the odd agora – hundredth of a shekel – won’t make you rich or poor, but there’s something wrong in the fact that people across the country are being overcharged so that stores can play that silly old marketing trick of making prices seem lower than they are.
At last a penny-pincher – and that’s meant as a compliment in this case – has come along. Attorney Ofer Shahal has launched a one-man crusade against this overcharging. He has written to the Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor Binyamin Ben-Eliezer demanding he outlaws the practice – and threatening to take the issue to the High Court if he doesn’t. According to this report he won over the Ministry, which is proposing a legal change.
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.
In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.
At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.
Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30
