The price is right - freebies

Who doesn't like getting something for nothing? While free samples aren't quite as common as we might like in Israel, they do exist and, as far as I can tell, are becoming more common as Israeli society becomes more Americanized - as least in its shopping habits.


Many of the free samples available online are offered at the same places you can find coupons - Facebook, company websites and email lists. You can also Google "דוגמית חינם"+ your desired product. However, there are also a couple of websites which list free samples available and where to find them, which makes the process much simpler for you:

Doogmit

ADV4U

Note that many of the offers on these sites are no longer valid, but it's worth going through any you're interested and clicking on the links. This is especially true of links to websites handing out samples of baby products, I've noticed.

While some of the samples are sent completely gratis, you may need to jump through some hoops to get others - for example, write a short piece about your beauty routine, or upload a photo of your children in their Purim costumes. It's up to you to decide whether the trouble is worth it (I usually decline). Ditto for signing up for the chance to win the item offered in a lottery of some sort.

Many of the free samples are really tiny (hey, you get what you pay for), but some can be full-sized products or on the large side, and you can really get a good impression of the product, and may even find it worth the money to buy it.Such as this rather generous sample of Aussie conditioner .

Another way to get free samples - online or off - is, of course, the old-fashioned flattery route: Post on your social media, or on the company's, how much you love their products, or just outright message them and ask if they have samples so you can form you own impression of their poduct. Even companies are only human, and you may hit a real bonanza in the form of an envelope stuffed with free samples  in your mailbox (or at the very least, a few coupons). I don't know that that would uniquely qualify as "being Israeli", but our national characteristic of forwardness surely helps in this case.

There's another sort of freebies I have yet to mention, and that's the free, used-in-good-condition stuff people are giving away. Local email lists are best for this, and there are also various local Freecycle groups, but if your Hebrew is passable, I recommend you also check out Israel's largest sites of this type, agora and Yad2.