Many customers are hesitant, for a variety of reasons, to stretch their budget to buy good quality tefillin gassot. Here's an inquiry we received recently.

My daughter married a Goy, so I, the Jewish grandfather, am the male voice of Judaism for my grandson. My daughter has kept Shabbat in the home.I am Orthodox but unfortunately Hashem has not blessed me with great wealth. His Bar Mitzvah is coming up soon. I would love to get him your Tefillin Gassot, but can only afford $500 American dollars. Do you think you could see your way to selling me these Tefillin? You should both have much Nachas in your lives and good health.    Sincerely Ron S.

Here's our reply to Ron:

Thank you for your inquiry and congratulations on the upcoming bar mitzvah. I understand your sentiments, but we cannot afford to discount tefillin at all. We work very hard to provide top value for tefillin by carefully vetting our suppliers, and we're aware that very few people who buy tefillin online are willing to pay $1,000. So we set the pricing as low as we can. I'm convinced, based on my years of experience selling online, that Tefillin Gassot you may find online for $500 to $600 can be quite problematic.

In general, we recommend that our customers opt for Gassot rather than Peshutim, even if it means stretching their budget. However, in your case, Peshutim may be the way to go. Most sellers put lower quality parchments in their Peshutim, but we don't. To maintain acceptable levels of quality, we use the same parchments in the Peshutim that we put in the Gassot.