Amazon is not giving away laptops for £3

A post on Facebook falsely claims that online retailer Amazon is “giving away” HP laptops for £3 to anyone living in England.

The post, which is accompanied by an image of dozens of branded laptops stacked on the floor, says: “Amazon is giving away HP laptops that have been in stock for over a year without original packaging – just £3 in delivery costs for residents of England! This special offer is part of an initiative to support the local community while freeing up warehouse space. Click below to check if you qualify and can receive your laptop!”

A spokesperson from Amazon told Full Fact that the offer is “not legitimate”.

Although many of the comments on the post claim to be from people who have successfully received their laptops, the URL that has been shared doesn’t take users to the official company website, but to an unrelated page with a review of a toolkit.

Posts offering fake deals are very common on Facebook, and we’ve fact checked many similar ones previously from Amazon and other retailers. Examples include false offers for chocolates, PlayStations and baby strollers, which were supposedly available at improbably cheap prices.

It is always worth double-checking whether posts sharing offers that seem too good to be true are genuine. One way to verify this is to see whether an offer has been shared by a company’s official page. This will often have more followers, a verified blue tick on platforms like Facebook or Instagram, and a longer post history.