The gap in consumer prices between Israel and the rest of the world has been exposed once more. A sticker placed on a pack of Colgate toothpaste announced to customers of a Tel Aviv store that the product was being sold at "a giant discount". An alert shopper spotted that the sticker covered the price at which the product was sold in the UK. While the price in the Israeli store was NIS 14.90, in the UK it cost just one pound, or a little over NIS 6 at current exchange rates. In other words, the "discount" price in Tel Aviv is nearly 2.5 times the UK price.
The "bargain" label aroused anger among the store's customers. "It's a joke. We're used to products in Israel being more expensive than in the rest of the world, but to cover it with a label that says that the product is on sale at a giant discount takes some nerve," they told Channel 2 Online News.
Store chain "Hatzarchania", in a branch of which the picture of the toothpaste with its sticker was photographed, shrugged off responsibility for the sticker and laid the blame on the importers of the product. "Haztarchania is not responsible for the appearance of the product and for any stickers put on it by the marketing company. The product has been taken off the shelves until the matter is thoroughly clarified with the importer," the chain said.
For its part, the importer, Einstein-Zur Import-Export & International Trade Ltd., claimed that responsibility for the consumer price lay with the store chain. "Einstein deals in parallel importing. The company sells its products at prices lower than those of the original importers of the items, otherwise it has no right to exist."
Einstein added, "Our company sells products to wholesale distributors who sell them to the retailers. Unfortunately, we have no control over the price at which the product is sold to the consumer. As far as this specific product is concerned, we sell products in local currency, and in order not to mislead the consumer, we decided to hide the price in pounds."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 24, 2014
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