What did you expect?

There isn't a significant purchase I have made in Israel from an Israeli where some kind of ripoff wasn't involved. Whether it be appliances, computers, real estate, insurance, anything, there's always trouble. There's trouble with smaller purchases too, for example taxis. With Anglos you can get a fair deal, but not with Israelis. Actually, with the Anglos it depends how long they have been here. You can't even trust a dentist if he has been here for a while and absorbed the attitudes.

So here's the latest. I bought a fancy mattress with a bed frame and headboard, from this store: עולם המזרונים רוזנפלד בית שמש, Nachal Zohar St 10. It was more money than I wanted to spend, but I went for it anyway for a member of family.

Since the mattress was expensive, it was thicker than the usual Israeli mattress, and the headboard on display at the store seemed too low to fit it. The salesman assured me that at the factory they would cut it to size. We had a twenty minute discussion about this where I detected doublespeak but pushed on to get a commitment. The factory will take care of it he promised.

Lo and behold, what was delivered doesn't fit. 

So now the mattress sticks out beyond the bed. It looks awkward, as if we slapped a mattress on an old bed.

The salesman claims it was for the delivery people to install correctly, and it was for us to tell them to do so. It's our fault, he said. Typical Israeli response. They always go on the attack in any conversation. He had said nothing about installation being important or I would have been sure to be there when it was installed. He said the factory would take care of it. 

The salesman refuses to pay for delivery people to return to fix it or to pay a handyman to do it. I'm not even sure that a handyman can fix it because the headboard needs to be raised 5 inches, and the baseboard is only 8 inches. That doesn't leave much room to screw the headboard to the base.

In typical Israeli fashion, he stuck to his position. Wouldn't budge. Didn't care. I told him I'd have to go to a rabbi to get a psak on what to do and that might hurt his business. He didn't care. That's the typical Israeli attitude. They don't think. They are blockheads. They don't fear man. They don't fear God. 

This is not a Chiloni. It is a man with black yarmulka and beard (trim) and white shirt. The claim is that the Chilonim are trouble, but the religious people are more religious than in America. I have found again and again that this yet another piece of propaganda to trick you into moving here. We always are affected by our environment and the environment in Israel is a bad one, run by dishonest and violent atheists. Deep in Me’ah Shearim there are proper Jews, but even they are no better than the proper Jews of Monsey or Williamsburg. 

When I saw the problem with the bed, I pondered what were the odds that this man would do the right thing? He speaks English but flawed English. I figured if he is Israeli, I shouldn't expect much. And I got even less than that. I got no refund, no assistance, no concern, no apology. 

Welcome home!

You want to move here and deal with lying crooks like this? You call that aliyah?