If you walk into any cell phone store in the US, you will find a stack of brochures that tell you about that companies plans. Believe it or not, I miss those brochures. I came to Israel with an unlocked iPhone and an Orange SIM card, prepared to buy either a pay as you go plan or a monthly plan. The first Orange store I tried claimed they didn’t do that, and I had to go to another store about 5 miles away. They did tell me that they would sell me a plan with a phone though since I was here for a year. When I asked for details, the salesman sat me down, and started writing down numbers in largely illegible script. Nothing is formalized or published. There are no brochures, and the website doesn’t list their plans. When I tried to tell him I wanted a different plan he would cross out the number, write in a new one, and fill the page with arrows as he added data, lowered the number of minutes, etc. This is a tactic commonly used by used car salesmen in the US to confuse the customer. There is no list of available plans to chose from – if the salesman doesn’t want to tell you about a plan, and you don’t know to ask for it, you can’t get it. If they don’t tell you about a catch like a long term contract or a hidden fee and you don’t ask about it, you’re stuck anyway. It didn’t take me too long to realize that the plans he was offering me were extremely expensive and I left.

After a nice 5 mile walk (the bus that should have taken me there never showed up – it turns out that it only runs during rush hour but that information wasn’t posted anywhere), I arrived at orange store number 2. They told me that they couldn’t sell me a sim card or a pay as you go plan, but could sell me a plan on my existing phone. After a minute of talking to the lady though it became obvious she couldn’t help me either – because I didn’t have a bank account. No amount of offering to pay with a credit card or cash up front would suffice – they would only deal with me if I had a bank account so they could continue to extract money from me even if I went broke. (I found it very suspicious that they wouldn’t deal with the bank hadoar, as that’s the only bank that doesn’t offer forced overdraft protection). She told me that I wanted a prepaid plan, and would have to go to a third store that was nearby, but she couldn’t tell me the address. “go down the street” she said “and ask someone else – it’s in that general direction”.

Store number 3 was not affiliated with either of the major cellphone companies, but they sold phones, accessories, sim cards, and plans for both Orange and Cellcom. I don’t know if it’s the actual store the lady was trying to direct me to, but I had seen them earlier so I decided to try them. They would helpfully sell me a prepaid SIM card (hooray), with no plan, and I could use a credit card. (Hooray). Great I said – what are the rates? Again, out came the paper. The lady would sell me a card that had 100 NIS on it, and came with a “bonus 120″. What are the rates I asked? She couldn’t tell me. How many minutes does 100 NIS translate to? She couldn’t tell me. Does this include data? She couldn’t tell me. It’s not that she didn’t want to mind you, it’s that this information is simply not published in a static fashion. (I eventually found it on the web, but it’s not included in their plan literature and as far as I can tell it changes periodically). I also discovered that the jerk who sold my the iPhone is the US was lying and the phone wasn’t unlocked. The fee for unlocking was another 120 NIS. (I know I could have done it myself fairly easily, but with no internet access and no phone, it would have been fairly challenging). Eventually I paid to have the phone unlocked, and paid for the prepaid plan. Even though I didn’t know what I was actually buying, trying to do anything in life without a phone was next to impossible. I knew I was the fryer, but I guess that’s part of going to Israel.

I miss those brightly colored brochures.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2011 at 5:26 am by Ari and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.