Israeli consumer law hands a much longer cancellation right to three groups of shopper: a person with a disability, a senior citizen, and an oleh chadash (new immigrant). If you hold a teudat oleh (new-immigrant certificate) issued fewer than five years ago, you can cancel a distance purchase within four months instead of the standard fourteen days, as long as you spoke or chatted with the seller at the moment you bought 110. Nothing about the rest of Israeli consumer law is that generous to you, and most of it is narrower than what you left behind.
Whether you ever get to use the four months turns on three newcomer-specific things: a five-year clock that runs on your certificate, whether that certificate is with you when a seller asks for it, and knowing that the body which enforces Israeli consumer law is not the body that hands your money back.
> This page is general information about Israeli consumer law, not legal advice. Consult a qualified professional before acting on a specific dispute.
What is the four-month cancellation window, and who qualifies?
It is the ordinary distance-selling cancellation right with a much longer clock, granted by consumer category rather than by citizenship. The Consumer Protection and Fair Trade Authority states that a consumer who is a person with a disability, a senior citizen or an oleh chadash may cancel the transaction within four months, counted from the later of the date the agreement was made, the date the product was delivered, or the date the statutory disclosure document reached them, so long as a telephone or chat conversation with the seller took place when the transaction was made 1. The seller may ask for one certificate proving the status, and one only 1.
The trigger has to happen while you are buying, not afterwards. The window opens only where a conversation took place at the moment the transaction was made 1. Kol Zchut reads that condition as satisfied by a chat, an email or any other electronic contact with a representative of the business, not only by a phone call 10. So if a Hebrew checkout is hard to read and you were going to open the chat widget or write to the shop in English anyway, do it while you are buying rather than a week later, because that exchange is what switches the longer window on.
The clock runs on the certificate, not on how long you feel you have been here. Kol Zchut reads the qualifying status as a teudat oleh or a certificate of eligibility for assistance as an oleh, where fewer than five years have passed since it was issued 10. Find the issue date on the document itself, because that is the only date this right counts from, and it matches your arrival date only if the certificate was handed to you on arrival. When the five years run out you are an ordinary consumer with fourteen days like everyone else, and nothing arrives in the post to tell you.
Some bookings get less than four months even when you qualify. Kol Zchut states two shortened variants that apply even where a conversation did take place: a one-off service such as booking a technician stays cancellable for four months but at least two business days must remain before the service date, and a tourism, hosting, flight, holiday or leisure booking needs at least seven business days still remaining 10.
One limit, stated plainly because overstating it would cost you: the Authority's guidance places this four-month right under the distance-transaction heading, next to the phone-and-internet rules, and not under the in-store heading 1.
How do you prove you are an oleh at the returns desk?
With the teudat oleh sitting in your aliyah file, or an equivalent certificate. Kol Zchut lists the documents a seller may accept across the wider group, including a teudat oleh or a certificate of eligibility for an oleh, a teudat ezrach vatik (senior-citizen certificate), and various Bituach Leumi (National Insurance) confirmations of disability or of eligibility for a disability benefit 10. The Authority's rule is that the seller may demand exactly one of them 1.
Here is the newcomer trap in one sentence. A lifelong Israeli asked to identify themselves at a service desk reaches for a teudat zehut (national ID) that lives in their wallet; you are being asked for a document that lives in a folder with your aliyah paperwork, on the day the deadline actually matters. Photograph it and keep the image on your phone, and the only practical obstacle to a right that otherwise costs you nothing is gone.
Separately, on any return you also need proof of the transaction itself: an invoice, a till receipt or an exchange slip. The Authority accepts other proof if it evidences the transaction, its date, the amount paid and the means of payment, and says explicitly that a charge listing in a credit-card app qualifies 1. If you have not yet learned the word heshbonit (invoice), that is the one to learn first, because it is what the returns desk will ask you for by name.
What can you actually return to an Israeli shop?
Less than a US or Canadian shopper expects, and more than a British one does. Israel does let you change your mind in a shop, but only inside a list. The in-store right applies only where the product's value exceeds ₪50, only to listed categories, and only where the product is undamaged and unused, per the Authority's cancellation guidance as updated 4 November 2025 1. Opening the original packaging is not by itself use unless proven otherwise; connecting the product to electricity, gas or water is 1.
| What you bought | In store, at the shop | Bought at a distance | Distance purchase, oleh within five years |
|---|---|---|---|
| Furniture, electrical and electronic appliances, watches | 14 days from receipt, unused and undamaged, value over ₪50 1 | 14 days from receipt or from the disclosure document, whichever is later, and returnable even after use 1 | 4 months from the latest of agreement, delivery or disclosure document 1 |
| Clothing and footwear | Until the end of the two following non-rest days, price tag not removed 1 | 14 days, as for any product 1 | 4 months, same basis 1 |
| Jewellery priced up to ₪3,000 | Until the end of the two following non-rest days 1 | 14 days, as for any product 1 | 4 months, same basis 1 |
| Gym, spa, cosmetic, cable and satellite subscriptions | 14 days from the transaction or the written contract, whichever is later, whether or not the service has started 1 | 14 days, whether or not the service has started 1 | 4 months, same basis 1 |
| Classes and courses, travel, hosting and leisure, not performed entirely abroad | 14 days from the agreement, and at least 14 non-rest days before the service 1 | 14 days, and more than 7 non-rest days must remain before the service 1 | 4 months, and at least 7 business days must remain before the service 10 |
| A one-off service, such as booking a technician | Not a listed category; for a service outside the list, what you agreed with the seller governs 1 | 14 days, and at least 2 non-rest days before the service 1 | 4 months, and at least 2 business days must remain 10 |
| Food, medicines, underwear, made-to-order goods, jewellery over ₪3,000, furniture once assembled in your home, anything paid for with vouchers or a gift card | No right at all 1 | No right for perishables, made-to-order goods, opened copyable media or digital information 1 | The Authority lists these exclusions with no oleh exception 1 |
All in-store and ordinary distance windows above are the Authority's, as its guidance stood on 4 November 2025 1; the oleh-column conditions on services are Kol Zchut's, as its page stood on 31 May 2026 10. One extra line sits inside the furniture-and-appliances row and is easy to miss: a product of any kind that is still in its original packaging can be cancelled within 14 days, on condition that the packaging was never opened at all 1. If you bought something in your first weeks, never got round to unwrapping it, and it is not in any listed category, that is the sentence to point at.
Two more things a newcomer would not guess. For anything outside the listed categories, a shop that limits returns must post a sign of at least A4 size headed "מדיניות החזרת מוצרים" (product return policy) setting out what it will and will not take back where the product is not faulty 1. That sign is in Hebrew, and reading it is the actual problem; our guide to signing Hebrew paperwork you cannot read covers the reflex. And cancelling in store is not free: the seller may charge a cancellation fee of 5 percent of the value of the product or ₪100, whichever is lower, plus the clearing fees it was charged on a credit transaction, plus installation costs capped at ₪100 where a product was installed in your home 1.
What changes when you buy at a distance?
Almost everything, and mostly in your favour. A distance transaction is one made by phone, internet or any other route with no meeting between the parties, provided it followed an approach or advertisement by the seller 1. The baseline is 14 days from receiving the product or the disclosure document, whichever is later, and the Authority states that products bought remotely can be returned even after use 1. That is the direct opposite of the in-store rule, and it sits in the same section of the guidance as the four-month oleh window.
Count those 14 days the Israeli way. Kol Zchut works the count through: a product received on 1 January can be cancelled until 15 January, the count includes rest days, court recess and a shabbaton, and if the final day itself falls on one of those the deadline moves one day later 10. A calendar full of chagim you have not learned yet does not shorten your window, and it can quietly lengthen it by a day.
What cancelling costs you depends entirely on why you are cancelling, and the two tracks are worth keeping straight.
Worked example. You land in July and order a fridge for ₪4,200 from an Israeli website in September, having phoned the shop first because the checkout was in Hebrew. It is delivered later that month.
- *Defect track.* The fridge arrives not working, not matching the description, or late. The seller must refund you within 14 days of your cancellation notice, must collect the product from your home, and may not charge a cancellation fee at all 1. The refund is the full ₪4,200.
- *Change-of-mind track.* Nothing is wrong with it, you simply do not want it, and you cancel in December, about three months after delivery. A native Israeli lost that option fourteen days after delivery, back in September; your window runs four months from delivery, into January 1. You return the fridge at your own expense 1, and the seller may charge the lower of 5 percent of ₪4,200 (₪210) or ₪100, so the fee is ₪100. Your hehzer kaspi (refund) is ₪4,100, due within 14 days of the notice 1.
The "whichever is lower" is the part worth internalising, because the two figures cross at ₪2,000. On a ₪1,400 purchase the fee is 5 percent, which is ₪70. On anything above ₪2,000 it is capped at ₪100, whether the item cost ₪4,200 or ₪42,000 1.
Two more things, both of which cut your way. Where a business offers better cancellation terms than the law requires, Kol Zchut states that the consumer gets the better terms 10, so a generous returns policy on an Israeli site is not cancelled out by the statutory minimum. And if the seller simply refuses, Kol Zchut states that you can sue for the refund and additionally claim statutory damages of up to ₪10,000, which a court may award without any loss being proved, as its page stood on 31 May 2026 10. Continuing subscriptions run down a separate stop-billing track with its own notice rules, which we cover in stranded subscriptions after aliyah; this page does not repeat it.
What did your home country actually give you?
Less than you remember, and in a different shape. This section is split by origin, because the expectation you arrived with decides which Israeli rule blindsides you.
### If you came from the United States
The federal cooling-off rule does not reach a shop. 16 CFR Part 429, as printed in the 2025 CFR, covers door-to-door sales: a sale the seller personally solicits where the buyer's agreement is made somewhere other than the seller's place of business, at $25 or more at the buyer's residence and $130 or more elsewhere 11. Its own definition excludes a transaction "made pursuant to prior negotiations in the course of a visit by the buyer to a retail business establishment having a fixed permanent location where the goods are exhibited or the services are offered for sale on a continuing basis" 11. So whatever the returns counter gave you at home came from the store's own policy or from your state's law, not from that federal rule, and neither of those reaches an Israeli shop. Israel runs the other way: narrower categories and shorter windows, but a legal right rather than a courtesy.
One door-to-door provision has an interesting shape from here. 16 CFR 429.1(a) requires that, in a door-to-door sale, the receipt or contract be in the same language as the one principally used in the oral sales presentation 11. Nothing like it appears in the three Authority documents this page is built on, the cancellation guidance, the warranty guidance and the technicians guidance, none of which puts any language duty on a seller 123. That is why the A4 return-policy sign is in Hebrew and reading it is left to you.
### If you came from the United Kingdom
Your distance-selling instincts transfer almost intact; your in-store instincts do not, and the cost of cancelling does not transfer at all. GOV.UK states that a trader does not have to refund a customer who no longer wants an item, for example because it is the wrong size or colour, unless they bought it without seeing it 12. For items bought online, by mail or by phone, the trader must offer a refund if told within 14 days of receipt and must refund within 14 days of getting the item back 12. Fourteen days is fourteen days in both countries.
Two differences will catch you. GOV.UK tells UK traders they "cannot deduct any fees from their refund, unless the item has been used or damaged", and must also refund the cost of standard delivery 12; an Israeli seller may charge you 5 percent or ₪100, whichever is lower, and you pay the return carriage 110. And in store, the UK gives you nothing on a change of mind while Israel gives you 14 days on an appliance and two non-rest days on a jumper 112. The UK duty to repair or replace an item returned within 6 months, unless the trader can prove it was not faulty at purchase 12, sits on the shop. Israel puts the equivalent duty somewhere else entirely, which the section after next is about.
### If you came from Ontario, Canada
You arrive owed nothing on a change of mind, and are pleasantly surprised. Ontario states plainly that "stores and other suppliers are not legally required to offer refunds or exchanges", so each store's own policy governs 13. That is Ontario's own guidance and Ontario's rules are not Canada's, so a reader from another province should check their own. Israel's right is national and statutory, but it lives inside the categories in the table above and nowhere else.
Where does Israeli consumer law stop?
At the Israeli seller. Kol Zchut states that Israeli law applies to Israeli websites, and that a purchase made through a website abroad is governed by the cancellation terms set out there 10. That boundary is worth naming rather than discovering. If the Hebrew checkout defeats you in your first months and you keep ordering from familiar home-country sites, those are months in which the four-month oleh window applies to nothing you buy. Before you order from a foreign site, read its own cancellation terms, because those terms, and not the Israeli rule, are what you get.
The Authority also does not cover several categories of dispute you might assume it does. Its own inquiry form routes insurers and insurance agents to the Capital Market, Insurance and Savings Authority, banks and credit companies to the Bank of Israel, and payment card issuers to the Israel Securities Authority 6. The same form sends clinic and health-fund complaints, and defects or labelling on food and cosmetics, to the Ministry of Health, and receipt and tax-invoice complaints to the Israel Tax Authority 6. Bank fee disputes therefore run down a different channel entirely, covered in disputing a bank charge and the banking ombudsman.
Who owes you a warranty, and who owes you nothing?
The manufacturer or the importer, and this is the inversion to reset first. In the UK the duty to repair or replace sits on the trader who sold you the item 12, and in Ontario a store is not legally required to offer you anything on a change of mind 13. Israel skips the shop: under the 2006 warranty regulations, as the Authority states them in guidance updated 12 January 2026, achrayut (warranty) covers new electrical, electronic and gas products priced above ₪150, plus mechanical mechanisms in furniture and water heaters, for one year from the date the product is actually handed over to you, and it is the manufacturer or the importer who must perform 2. Walking your broken toaster back to the shop is the reflex you brought with you, and it is aimed at the wrong party.
In that year the manufacturer or importer must repair any fault free of charge using original and new spare parts, and if it cannot repair the product within the year it must supply an identical or equivalent new one or refund the price, at its own choice rather than yours 2. That last clause is the second inversion: in the UK the choice runs the other way, and GOV.UK tells traders a customer can still reject an item after it has been repaired or replaced 12.
Repair times have hard limits, and the list is unusually specific.
| Where the repair happens | Maximum time, excluding Shabbat and festivals |
|---|---|
| Refrigerator or freezer | 1 day |
| Cooking hob, electric or gas | 2 days |
| Washing machine, air conditioner, tumble dryer, TV over 20 inches, apartment heating furnace, dishwasher, cooking and baking oven | 3 days |
| Solar water heater or boiler | 3 days, or 14 if a replacement heater is supplied |
| Any other non-transportable product repaired at your home | 7 days from the service call |
| Product handed to a workshop or service station | 10 days |
| Product handed to the shop where you bought it | Two weeks |
Figures as the Authority states the regulations, updated 12 January 2026 2. The products in the first rows must be repaired at your home, and if a workshop is needed the manufacturer or importer transports the item both ways at no extra charge 2. Where the warranty is conditioned on installation by an authorised technician, that installation must happen at your home within seven days of delivery, unless a longer period was agreed 2. The manufacturer or importer must also keep at least one service station in or near each of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv-Yafo, Haifa and Be'er Sheva 2, which is worth knowing before you settle somewhere far from all four.
Two deltas here that a lifelong Israeli never has to think about.
The longest warranty in the regulations sits on the water heater. It carries four years from delivery, with a one-year carve-out for the heating element, the thermostat including a differential thermostat, the pump in a solar system, the mixing tap and limescale blockage 2. If your home-country plumbing meant a gas boiler or an electric tank and never a rooftop collector, this is the appliance you understand least and are covered on longest.
The regulations name no Israeli duty-bearer for the appliances in your lift. They name the manufacturer or the importer, and, on products above ₪400 where neither can be located, the seller, who then has three weeks to discharge the duty 2. A fridge you shipped yourself has no Israeli importer and no Israeli seller, so the only party the regulations name that still exists is a manufacturer abroad, and the Authority's guidance addresses no such case anywhere in its text 2. That is a consequence of who the regulations name rather than a written exclusion, and it is a cost that appears on no shipping quote. The shipping and customs side is covered separately in rental assistance and customs exemptions.
How long can a technician keep you waiting?
Two hours past the time you were given, and no longer 3. This is the rule you will lean on hardest in your first six months, because that is when your calendar is a queue of deliveries and installations, and it is also the one a newcomer is most easily talked out of. The Authority states that a seller may offer to have you wait for a phone call instead of fixing an hour in advance, and that the consumer is not obliged to agree 3. If your Hebrew is still thin and the person on the line is fast, that is the sentence to hold on to.
The rules cover delivery of a product bought from the seller, installation or removal of a product, repairs under warranty or a continuing repair service, a service conditional on a product working in your home such as an internet router, and periodic domestic gas inspections 3. They apply only to waiting at your home, not at a workplace or anywhere else, and not where you do not have to wait at all, such as a parcel left by the door 3.
The seller must set an exact date and arrival time, must narrow any wide range down to two hours by the day before, and may notify a change up to 20:00 the previous evening 3. Permitted arrival hours run 08:00 to 19:00 on weekdays and until 13:00 on Fridays and festival eves, which is your first structural lesson in an Israeli working week that ends on Friday lunchtime, though those hours do not bind delivery without installation or removal, or repair work outside a warranty 3. Per the Authority's guidance as updated 23 February 2026, lateness of more than two hours entitles you to ₪300 and more than three hours to ₪600, with no compensation where the delay came from causes the seller could not have foreseen or prevented 3. The Authority's own example: a warranty technician booked for 10:00 to 12:00 who arrives at 14:01 owes ₪300 3.
Note the collection mechanism, though. To actually receive that ₪300 you must file in the Small Claims Court 3, which is the section after next and the second big surprise.
Can a seller refuse your credit card under a minimum?
No. Amendment No. 72 to the Consumer Protection Law forbids a seller from conditioning payment by credit card on meeting a minimum purchase amount, and it binds a physical shop, a market stall and a website alike 4. As announced by the Authority on 24 April 2025, the Commissioner may impose administrative fines of ₪22,530 per breach on a corporation and ₪7,170 per breach on an osek murshe (authorised dealer, a registered self-employed business) 4.
If you came from the United States, that sign by the till is not merely familiar, it is a practice federal law goes out of its way to protect. 15 U.S.C. §1693o-2(b)(3)(A)(i) bars a payment card network from inhibiting a merchant's ability to set a minimum dollar value for accepting credit cards, so long as the minimum does not discriminate between issuers or networks and does not exceed $10.00 15. The exact practice US law shields from the card networks is the practice Israeli law now fines. This is a rule about the card, not about instalments; the Israeli tashlumim habit is a separate thing, covered in credit cards and tashlumim.
Who actually gets your money back?
Not the regulator, and this is where the newcomer instinct goes most badly wrong. The Consumer Protection and Fair Trade Authority is an enforcement body. Its own English inquiry form says: "In addition to submitting a complaint to us, if you require individual assistance, such as obtaining a refund, canceling a transaction, or seeking compensation, you should file a small claim", and in the same block points you to the Histadrut Consumer Authority on *2383 for individual assistance 6. Your complaint may reveal a pattern of conduct that leads the Authority to open a criminal investigation, an administrative review or proceedings against a business 6. It will not produce your ₪4,100.
If your instinct is that a complaint to the national regulator is the road to your money, put it down at the border. Here the regulator polices the market, and a court, or a consumer organisation acting for you, deals with your particular fridge.
The good news first: the English complaint form is real. The English gov.il service page states that "This service and forms are provided in Hebrew" and suggests finding a Hebrew speaker 5, but the Hebrew version of that same service page links inquiry forms in Arabic, English and Russian, and the English one renders end to end, including the jurisdiction carve-outs and the clarification quoted above 146. Do not let the English page turn you away. The Authority accepts complaints about misleading information, misleading advertising, exploitation of distress and undue influence, overcharging or unauthorised charging, price display and product marking, warranty and service issues, failure to receive binding documents, and cancellation of transactions 5, and the Hebrew service page states that the service is provided at no cost 14.
Now the part with five obstacles a lifelong Israeli never meets. A small claim:
1. Must be filed in Hebrew only. If you need an interpreter at the hearing, a written request goes to the court secretariat at least seven days before the hearing date 78. 2. Must be filed from a desktop, by logging in to the national identification system, which a recent arrival may not have set up yet, and cannot be filed from a phone 7. 3. Needs the defendant's ID number if the judgment is ever to be worth anything. You may file without it, but then you cannot open an enforcement file to execute the judgment if the business does not pay 7. For a sole trader, that number is usually the dealer number printed on your invoice, and you sue the owner as a private individual rather than the business; a company's registration number is free to look up at the Companies Registrar; tracing a private individual's address or ID through the Population and Immigration Authority carries a fee 7. 4. Costs 1 percent of the amount claimed, with a ₪50 minimum, payable online by credit card only, per the Hebrew page as updated 29 July 2026 7. On the ₪4,100 refund above, 1 percent is ₪41, so you pay the ₪50 floor. A fee waiver can be applied for on grounds of inability to pay 7. 5. Has a ceiling of ₪39,900, correct to 1 January 2026 per the Hebrew page 7.
After filing, confirming that the claim was served on the defendant, summoning witnesses and tracking the file are the claimant's responsibility, and at least 60 days before the hearing you must check whether the defendant received it, because without proof of service the judge cannot hear the case and the claim may be struck 7.
Three things soften it. A small claim can seek not only money but replacement of a product, repair of a product, or cancellation of a transaction 7. No lawyer is involved, and free volunteer desks in the courthouses help draft the claim 7. And for an advertising or internet-commerce claim you may file in your own town of residence rather than the seller's 7, which is the difference between a bus ride and a day trip.
Why should you read the Hebrew page for the number?
Because the English layer of gov.il is a translation of an older Hebrew page, and on figures the Hebrew page wins. Three checks you can repeat yourself, all inside the sections above.
The ceiling. The Hebrew small-claims page gives ₪39,900, correct to 1 January 2026, and was last updated 29 July 2026 7. The English version of the same page still says NIS 38,900 as of 1 January 2025, and was last updated 7 January 2026 8. Note that it is the translated service page that lags rather than every English surface: the Authority's English inquiry form carries the current NIS 39,900 6.
The phone number. The English complaint page prints 02-5396000 with a call centre open Sunday and Wednesday from 10am to 12pm 5. The Hebrew service page, the cancellation guidance, the warranty guidance, the technicians guidance and the English inquiry form all print 073-3717777, Monday to Wednesday between 09:00 and 13:00 141236.
The guides themselves. Neither substantive guide has an English address that resolves. Swap /he/ for /en/ on the cancellation or the warranty URL and gov.il returns its error page rather than a translation 12. The Hebrew complaint service page was last updated 9 August 2026 against the English one's 8 December 2025 145.
The habit is the takeaway, not this year's figures: when a number matters, open the Hebrew page, find the "תאריך עדכון" (update date) at the top, and compare it against the English one. That is a step no Hebrew reader ever has to think about.
The statute underneath all of this, the Consumer Protection Law of 1981, was published on 26 April 1981, has been in force since 1 August 1981, is recorded as valid, and was last amended on 28 July 2026 9, so a figure you memorise this year is not a figure you can lean on in three.
What does this page not cover?
Tax, and it is worth being explicit rather than leaving it implied. US investment-tax treatment, including the PFIC regime that catches US-citizen olim holding non-US pooled funds, is a separate subject covered in the PFIC problem. FBAR, FATCA and the US worldwide filing duty are likewise out of scope here; see US tax obligations after aliyah. This page names no pooled investment vehicle and makes no tax claim at all.
Also out of scope, each with its own page: price display, unit pricing and shrinking pack sizes in shrinkflation in the Israeli supermarket; the pressure tactics in scams targeting new olim; standing bank orders in horaat keva; and buying a car with no Israeli credit file.
One thing worth doing today: open your teudat oleh, read the issue date printed on it, add five years, and put that date in your calendar. Nothing arrives in the post when the four-month window closes, and the day after it does you are an ordinary consumer with fourteen days like everyone else.
Frequently asked questions
For five years from your teudat oleh's issue date, you can cancel a distance purchase within four months, not fourteen days, provided you spoke or chatted with the seller when buying. In-store returns are narrower. If a seller refuses, the regulator orders no refund: its own form sends you to a Hebrew-only small claim or a consumer organisation.
Four months instead of fourteen days, counted from the later of the date the agreement was made, the date the product was delivered, or the date you received the statutory disclosure document, provided a telephone or chat conversation with the seller took place at the time of the transaction [[1]]. The same four months are granted to a person with a disability and to a senior citizen, so it is a rule about consumer category rather than about being an oleh. The five-year qualifying test is Kol Zchut's rather than the Authority's: a teudat oleh or a certificate of eligibility for assistance as an oleh, issued fewer than five years ago [[10]].
The Authority's guidance places the four-month right under the distance-transaction heading, so it is presented as a rule for purchases made by phone, online or otherwise without meeting the seller [[1]]. For an in-store purchase the ordinary category windows apply: 14 days on furniture, electrical and electronic appliances and watches, and until the end of the two following non-rest days on clothing and footwear, in both cases only above ₪50 and only on an unused, undamaged product [[1]].
One certificate, and the seller is entitled to ask for exactly one [[1]]. Kol Zchut lists a teudat oleh or a certificate of eligibility for an oleh among the accepted documents, alongside a teudat ezrach vatik and various Bituach Leumi confirmations of disability or benefit eligibility [[10]]. Keeping a photo of the certificate on your phone removes the practical obstacle, since it is not a wallet document.
Yes, within 14 days of receipt, provided the product's value exceeds ₪50 and it is undamaged and unused, per the Authority's cancellation guidance as updated 4 November 2025 [[1]]. Connecting the product to electricity, gas or water counts as use; opening the original packaging on its own does not, unless proven otherwise [[1]]. The in-store right is confined to listed categories, so it is a change-of-mind right inside a list rather than across the shop.
In store, and on a change-of-mind distance cancellation, the seller may charge 5 percent of the value of the product or ₪100, whichever is lower, so anything priced above ₪2,000 is effectively capped at ₪100 [[1]]. On a distance cancellation you also return the product at your own expense [[1]][[10]]. That is the opposite of the UK, where GOV.UK tells traders they cannot deduct any fee from a distance-cancellation refund unless the item was used or damaged [[12]]. Cancelling a distance purchase because of a defect, a mismatch with the description, late supply or another breach is free: the seller collects the item from your home and must refund you within 14 days of the notice [[1]].
The 2006 regulations place the one-year repair duty on the manufacturer or the importer, and on products above ₪400 where neither can be located, on the seller, as the Authority states them in guidance updated 12 January 2026 [[2]]. An appliance you shipped yourself has no Israeli importer and no Israeli seller, so the only party the regulations name that still exists is a manufacturer abroad, and the guidance addresses no such case in its text [[2]].
Four years from the date the product is actually handed over, except for the heating element, the thermostat including a differential thermostat, the pump in a solar system, the mixing tap and limescale blockage, for which the warranty is one year [[2]]. Repair time is 3 days excluding Shabbat and festivals, or 14 days if a replacement water heater was supplied to you [[2]].
No. Its own English inquiry form states that if you require individual assistance, such as obtaining a refund, cancelling a transaction or seeking compensation, you should file a small claim, and points separately to the Histadrut Consumer Authority on *2383 for individual assistance [[6]]. The Authority's own role is enforcement and regulation, and a complaint may lead it to open a criminal investigation, an administrative review or proceedings against a business [[6]].
No. Claims must be filed in Hebrew only, and if an interpreter is required for the hearing a written request must reach the court secretariat at least seven days before the hearing date [[7]][[8]]. Filing online is desktop-only through the national identification system, the court fee is 1 percent of the amount claimed with a ₪50 minimum payable by credit card, and you need the defendant's ID number if you ever want to enforce the judgment, per the Hebrew page as updated 29 July 2026 [[7]].
₪39,900, stated as correct to 1 January 2026 on the Hebrew gov.il page [[7]]. The English version of the same page still shows NIS 38,900 as of 1 January 2025 [[8]], while the Authority's English inquiry form carries the current NIS 39,900 [[6]], which is a useful demonstration that it is the translated service pages that lag, and that where a figure matters the Hebrew page is the one to check.