World of Judaica

Great website, great selection, thought I would use this site for a gift for my folks who would be visiting me in Germany in 6 weeks.
So ordered a Menorah, added a few small things so as to get free delivery and the credit card was charged immediately.

Then nothing for 3 weeks. We were then told 'We will tell you when it has been sent'. So delivery 14 days + after ordering is misleading as they need to source the items first.

Then they said order is ready, except the candles, I said ok we wait.

Order arrives, customs form not filled in - World of Judaica say that is not their problem, actually it is, they need to fill in the customs form, leaving it blank is no good. So we had to pay a service fee and duty on the whole bill amount (even though really they shouldn't charge for a Menorah but it is Germany and the bureacracy is a nightmare and I just wanted the box).

Get the box... looks rather small... no Menorah, just the extra stuff we ordered to bump it up for free delivery.

No response to emails. Even strongly worded complaints.

Live chat works and is great, except that is just a bunch of kids who tell you what their comp says, they can't do much else to help as they are at a remote site. They must really love their jobs at the moment with all the problems this company is having.

Anyway, they say the order has been split (don't know what happened to the Menorah when the shipment was only missing the candles) and we have no idea when it will come.

It has now been 10 weeks. I can't see it coming now but will wait till nearer Hannukah before going to Visa for a partial refund which will no doubt be another long fangled process. Although with all the complaints here I am sure they will be aware.

Not sure if they are not paying suppliers who are now not sending them stuff or what but really they shouldn't be selling stuff they haven't got.

They might reply here now that I have complained and say oh order has shipped, but until it is in my hands I am not believing anything, a real shame because if they had said oh sorry this will take 10 weeks I probably would have said well fine, no probs! But no response means people just feel like they have been cheated.

I am thoroughly disgusted with World of Judaica. Save your time and money and stay away.

My wife decided to make tallit by hand for our daughter's bat mitzvah, occurring on January 7. Four weeks out from the date she purchased tallit strings from WoJ for $3- a great price. She also payed $21 for expedited shipping. Expedited shipping that still required 9-11 business days.

You read that right: $21, or Seven Times the product price to get the strings with enough time to finish the tallit for the bat mitzvah.

On the eleventh business day, my wife checked the tracking only to discover that despite WoJ claiming the product was "In Stock" it was on back order. She immediately attempted to cancel the order as it would not arrive in time. This was December 29. The website also continued to lie about the item's "In Stock" status.

Our cancellation was ignored for five days despite emailing, calling, and texting. We were informed today that WoJ shipped the strings on January 2, three business days after we requested a cancellation and that they would not refund our money.

This company should be ashamed of itself. Not only are they dishonest and incompetent, but they reaffirm the worst opinions of Jews.

UPDATE:
The tallit strings arrived today. The day after we finished my daughter's tallit using different string.

Technically this is in time for her bat mitzvah but it is a week later than what we paid for, and after the project was completed. I am mentioning it here for my own sense of honesty and integrity.

The long and short of it is, that I will consider WoJ, again but only as an absolute last resort, and only through a third party with fulfillment guarantees such as Amazon. WoJ itself cannot be trusted and I stand by my earlier review.

I bought a menorah and it is better than I expected! Good quality and customer suppot! I will order again!

"I ordered from this company and spent a lot of money on my order. I also paid extra for 5-7 day express shipping, so that I would receive my order before Channukah. My order ended up being weeks late, and never got here in time. I had to tell my family members who I bought these gifts for that it would be late (even though I wasn't even sure it would ever arrive). While I was waiting for my order, I tried contacting the company several times via by phone and email with no response at all! Therefore, I filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, and only then did they respond saying my order has finally been shipped out! However, they did not take responsibility for their actions and tried blaming anyone else they could for the late delivery! Mind you, 2 of the products I ordered were Menorahs that I was going to give my niece and nephew, so they can light their own Menorahs. This company should be ashamed of themselves. Don't order from them as you may never even get your order, and especially don't pay extra for express shipping! Below is their email response to me after I filed a complaint with the BBB:

Thank you for contacting us. I am extremely sorry for missing the emails from you.

I would also like to apologize for the delays encountered with your order. We were waiting on the supplier and we were not updated by our fulfillment team that there were any delays, so we did not know that your order was going to be delayed. We would of course have told you if we knew and had the information.

I have now opened up a case for my team to speak with the postal service and push for this to get to you without any further delay.

Once again, we sincerely apologize for the delay and any inconvenience caused.

Kind Regards,

How did they not have the information, and who is the supplier? Very odd….

This is my 3rd purchase from World of Judaica.

The first time I bought from this website was back in February 2013 when I bought a Seder Plate for Passover. Everything went wall back then, no complaints.

My second order was last year before Hanukkah. I ordered a Hanukkah menorah, a pack of 20 plastic dreidels and a pack of Hanukkah candles. My order this time was last (too about 5 weeks to arrive), and when it finally arrived, the Menorah (glass menorah) was broken.

I emailed CS and the were slow to respond. I asked to escalate to the CS manager and ended up having their CEO calling me personally. He was very nice and deeply apologized for the entire situation. He explained that they were overwhelmed during Hanukkah with much more orders than expected, and in addition moved to new offices which caused delays. Following the call with the CEO they ended up reseeding me the glass menorah and also added a free gift which I highly appreciated.

A few weeks later I got an email from them (that was sent out to many customers I assume) apologizing for the delays that occurred during that Hanukkah season. The email was very cute I must say (all employees were photographed holding signs that say "we apologize" and "thanks you" both in English and in Hebrew).

My third order was a few weeks ago. This time I ordered a Star of David gold necklace which arrived to the US in less than a week. Looks great! I got a great deal for this one (used a coupon from their newsletter).

Overall I find this company to be very responsible and reliable. Good people, great prices
And an AMAZING product selection.

Highly recommended.

I recommend World of Judaica to all of my friends-they have a great selection of holiday gifts and it feels great to support Israel.

I've been online shopping for over 20 years but have never in that time had an experience this terrible... and that experience matches what everyone else is saying.

Ordered on 24 November... money deducted immediately. All items listed as in stock on the website. Delivery estimate 10-17 business days. Then nothing. Oh the long waits to hear anything that you will quickly become used to. The online status goes to "In fulfilment"... and nothing happens. Then more nothing.

Eventually on 16 December they e-mail to say one of the items is out of stock for the foreseeable future and ask me to choose another item. Despite still showing it as in stock the previous day, on this day it is suddenly gone from the website after all the weeks of showing it as in stock. I now see that this is the standard MO for this site, but I go ahead and choose another item that is in stock and reply to their e-mail.

Silence. More silence. You go to use the live chat on their site and discover that it *always* says they're not available and gives you a contact form to fill in. At this point I fill in a complaint about their service. Silence. Almost a week later on 21 December they reply back and say they've updated the order and "We will take care to email you the tracking information once the package ships out".

Oh yes, the false hope you also have to get used to. On 26 December they respond to my complaint. Like everyone is reporting, all they ever do is blame their suppliers. Anything and everything is the supplier's fault... they even blamed their lack of communication on the suppliers... "we can only upgrade the costumer when they update us".

Then they throw in more false hope... "We would like to upgrade your shipping method to expedited as an apology for the inconvenience". Great. By this stage I notice that - remarkably - the *replacement* item I nominated was suddenly changed to out of stock, which they didn't mention when making this kind offer. So there's no sign of when they might actually ship anything at all, expedited or not.

I reply back on 27 December to tell them to cancel the order and process a refund.

Silence. More Silence. Eventually on 6 January they finally acknowledge cancelling the order, telling me to wait a *further* seven days for them to process a refund. I'm not planning to wait and find out how many weeks this means in reality - I'm lodging a transaction dispute with my bank.

What gets me that they make out that this is a one off and it's all their terrible supplier's fault, yet once you look at the reviews suddenly the truth is revealed... complaint after complaint with the exact same experiences.

These people wouldn't know customer service skills if it hit them in the face. Don't be fooled by the slick website... this organisation is utterly hopeless!