Disgruntled at Duty-Free

July 30, 2008 - 5:18 PM by Jessica · 3 Comments
Filed under: Business, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness

My husband had just gotten off the plane from a two-week work trip in the States, and before I could bundle him into the car at the airport and whisk him back home — I was waiting outside while he was gathering his baggage and duty-free treats — he suddenly stopped answering his cellphone — horrors! — and all I could think of was, ‘Has he been stopped by Customs?’

Of course, he had. After some 20 years of living in Israel, and making the Israel-U.S. trip many a time, with more than a few electronic treats in his bags, Daniel made the cardinal error of buying a new microwave in duty-free and bringing back a few birthday presents — all electronic — in his bags. But it was the big DeLonghi box sitting on his cart that alerted the bored customs crew, who immediately set their sights on him and demanded that he open all bags. There, to their delight, were three unopened boxes, including two cameras and an iHome, all birthday presents for family members back here.

After paying 850 shekels in fines and VAT, Daniel was set free, albeit disgruntled, and made his way over to our car. Now, of course, we also had to pay NIS 20 for parking, since we’d overstayed our 20-minute free parking. On the way home, we engaged in a step-by-step dismantling of the scenario, from the decision to buy a microwave in duty-free (where you don’t have to pay the 15.5% VAT that is paid on most consumer items in Israel), to not doing a better job of hiding the cameras in the suitcase.

It’s a funny thing, though; it’s not that duty-free shopping is such a bargain. It’s simply very easy to spend the time before boarding buying some things that you’ve needed to get, and then leaving it at the airport to bring home at the end of a trip. An Israeli innovation, you could say. But there are the downsides; whether it’s when the appliance arrives broken and you have to deal with the company’s less than satisfying customer service, or when you buy several bottles of whisky duty-free, only to find out that you’re only allowed to bring in one liter of liquor or two liters of wine. (That happened to friends of ours who were stocking up on whisky before their daughter’s wedding.)

So, did it pay to buy the electronics in the States, smuggle them home and then pay a fine? Well, yes. It’s still cheaper over there, and the range of choices are much wider. It would have been much more frustrating if they’d succeeded in making Daniel pay a fine on his two-year-old laptop that was also in his bag, and which, they pointed out, doesn’t have a Hebrew keyboard, which could mean that it was also bought in the States. But they let him slide on that one, and in fact, after a whispered consultation, decided to lower his total bill from NIS 1150 to NIS 850. And so, in the end, another bargain at the airport.

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