The courts have ruled that the service is legal, but it still leaves a muddled taste in my mouth. I’m talking about Free.co.il, a popular Israeli auction site that works more like the Lotto than eBay.
You can’t help but be drawn in by Free.co.il’s home page which promises a Sony Playstation for NIS 99 ($26), a MacBook Air for NIS 299 ($79), and even a brand new Mazda 3 for a steal at only NIS 899 ($237). Who wouldn’t want to play with deals like these?
At first, it would be hard to distinguish Free.co.il from a traditional eBay-style auction site: you place your bids on items for sale and the highest bidder within the auction’s time frame wins. Unlike eBay, though, you have to pay for your bids. The cost of each bid varies; for the MacBook, it’s NIS 20 (about $5). It’s higher for bigger ticket items.
So, let’s say you bid 20 times to win that MacBook. You’ll pay NIS 20 x 20 or NIS 400 ($105). Then you pay the price of the unit, plus shipping of NIS 75 ($20) – written in tiny letters on a separate page you have to click to see. Your total cost: NIS 774 ($206). That’s still way less than the retail price of NIS 8,899 ($2,400) at Apple’s Tel Aviv outlet, but it’s not the NIS 299 that was initially advertised.
And what if you don’t win? Then you lose the NIS 400 entirely. That’s how Free.co.il can offer such low prices.
Still, if you place your bids right (and there is a whole section on “bidding strategies†on the site), and you’re willing to stick with it and spend hours aggressively placing last minute bets, you will win eventually (hopefully for an item you actually want). So, even if you wind up spending NIS 2,000 bidding on several items before winning one that’s valued at NIS 10,000, you’re still getting the product at an 80% discount.
There’s one other trick Free.co.il has up its digital sleeve. If two people bid the same amount, both bids are canceled. That means that the highest “unique†bid wins. You can see who’s placing what bids, their initials and even where they live, but not the amount they’re spending. So you never really know if your bid is being burned or not.
Free.co.il is entirely in Hebrew, but there’s a thriving market of overseas competitors. Is this a good business? Investors seem to think so. One of Free.co.il’s rivals, Swoopo, has raised an astonishing $14 million. Another – BigDeal – has a $4 million war chest and some Silicon Valley luminaries at the helm.
It’s certainly compelling – who wouldn’t want an iPhone at a tenth of the retail price – though I don’t think I’d have the stomach for it (I usually chicken out and click the “Buy it Now†button on eBay). And it peeves me that Free.co.il buries those hefty shipping fees in hard-to-find small print – it makes me wonder what else are they hiding.
But if you’re willing to play by the rules, and you enjoy the thrill of the game, Free.co.il could be the 21st century version of “The Price is Right.†All we need now is our own Israeli version of Bob Barker.
This article originally appeared on the Israelity blog.
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This is the dirty truth: most septic companies just pump tanks. They act like quick-fix salesmen at a chainsaw convention. But Septic Solutions? They’re unique. It all began back in the early 2000s when Art and his family—just kids scarcely tall enough to shoulder a shovel—assisted install their family’s septic system alongside a experienced pro. Visualize this: three pre-teens knee-deep in Pennsylvania clay, discovering how soil absorption affects drainage while their friends played Xbox. “We never just dig ditches,” Art explained to me last winter, hot coffee cup in hand. “We understood how ground whispers secrets. A patch of wetland vegetation here? That’s Mother Nature shouting ‘high water table.'”
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I need to share with you something the majority of septic companies will not: there are two types of people in this world. Those who assume septic systems are simply “subterranean tanks for waste,” and those who’ve had raw sewage gurgling into their yard at midnight. I learned this distinction the tough way in 2005—waist-deep in sludge, trembling in a Washington rainstorm, as my family and I aided a grizzled installer restore our family’s broken system. I was 14. My hands were raw. My jeans were ruined. But that night, something changed: This is not just dirt work. It’s people’s lives we’re protecting.
This is the harsh truth: most septic companies just maintain tanks. They act like band-aid salesmen at a disaster convention. But Septic Solutions? They are different. It all started back in the early 2000s when Art and his siblings—just kids barely tall enough to shoulder a shovel—assisted install their family’s septic system alongside a experienced pro. Imagine this: three youngsters knee-deep in Pennsylvania clay, learning how soil permeability affects drainage while their friends played Xbox. “We did not just dig ditches,” Art shared with me last winter, steaming coffee cup in hand. “We understood how ground whispers secrets. A patch of wetland vegetation here? That’s Mother Nature yelling ‘high water table.'”
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