As YWN reported last week, the huge Strauss company is suffering from plummeting stocks in the wake of its announcement that it is canceling its advertisements on the right-wing Channel 14 channel and the resulting right-wing boycott of the food company.

The main “victim” of the boycott has been Strauss’s Tami 4 water bar, which is especially popular among religious customers due to its Shabbos setting. And of course, religious people also tend to hold right-wing political views – something the company failed to consider when making its politically loaded decision to boycott Channel 14.

Media personality Yedidya Epstein reported this week that so many customers canceled their subscription service to Tami 4 that the company resorted to illegal methods to deter the wave.

“At least 8,000 people canceled their subscription through the website נתק אותי [Disconnect me] and thousands more through the company itself,” Epstein wrote. “The company went into a panic and chose to act in illegal ways to stop the wave:

1. They ignored cancellation requests from the נתק אותי website, with customers receiving a message that ‘information is lacking, power of attorney is lacking’ [which is not actually needed], and in the body of the message, they asked the customers to call them to ‘to finalize the account.'”

2. Even more enraging – Tami 4 chose to give an ‘exit fine’ to customers who requested to cancel their accounts!”

“For each customer, they make a phone call to ‘finalize the account’ and claim that they owe money if they cancel (hundreds of shekels) – on the grounds of: ‘We sent you a bulb and filter worth X amount of money and you paid less than that so far this year so you are left with a ‘debt.'”

“There are hundreds of customers who paid this ‘debt’ and canceled, there are hundreds of customers who argued with them and threatened to file a complaint with the Consumer Protection Authority and the company waived them the exit fine!”

“There are no customers who have seen such a clause in the Tami 4 subscription. In short, Tami 4 enriched their coffers by hundreds of thousands of shekels at the expense of the customers who canceled their subscriptions during this protest. It’s simply a disgrace.”

“This is the response of the נתק אותי website: ‘We have been dealing with this issue for the past few days and unfortunately we have no solutions to offer customers. We are currently gathering all consumer complaints against Tami 4 and transferring everything to the Consumer Protection Authority.'”

Epstein provided links to the נתק אותי website and the class-action lawsuit against Tami 4:

להתנתקות https://natekoti.co.il/natek-tami4/ לתביעה הייצוגית https://facebook.com/groups/tami4.lawsuit

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)