What was claimed
A Dyson Supersonic hair dryer is available for just £1.78 in an AO.com clearance sale.
Our verdict
Both AO and Dyson say that this has nothing to do with them. We can find no trace of the company that claims to be behind the offer.
Dyson clearance sale on Facebook has nothing to do with Dyson
26 May 2022
A post on Facebook claims that online retailer AO is hosting a clearance sale, meaning the price of the Dyson Supersonic hairdryer—usually £399, according to the image in the post—is just £1.78.
In fact, both Dyson and AO have told Full Fact that this has nothing to do with them—and both companies say they have asked Facebook to remove similar posts.
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What the post says
The post includes what appears to be a photograph of several Dyson Supersonic hairdryers on sale in a shop. The caption alongside the image says: “AO is holding a final liquidation sale with Dуsоn in response to the desire to completely withdraw from the eastern market.
“Only now you can take part in the promotion and get a Dyson Suреrsоnіс for just £1.78. Hurry!
“The expiration date of the promotion is not exactly known”
A number of comments on the post come from people who claim to have taken part in the promotion and received a Dyson hair dryer.
The post itself comes from an account called Closeout, which gives its address as 180 Tottenham Court Road, London. We can find no company with that name and that address registered at Companies House. Nor can we find a website for such a company.
The Closeout Facebook page was created on 22 May 2022, and its only posts are this one and another linking to the same promotion.
The Facebook post includes a link to a site which looks similar to ao.com, but has an address beginning with the domain “eslpq.za.com”.
After answering three questions and selecting a “gift box”, users are told to “enter your data and pay a bid fee to get Dyson Supersonic Hair”. This leads to another site that looks similar to ao.com, but which has the address “thewinners-uk.online” and requests personal information.
This has nothing to do with Dyson or AO
We contacted Dyson and AO about an identical post earlier in the month, which has since been deleted.
AO said it was not affiliated with this offer, and that it had reported posts like this to Facebook several times.
Dyson said it had also reported the post to Facebook. A spokesperson said: “Ultimately, the best way to ensure you are buying a genuine Dyson product is to purchase it directly from an official Dyson website or a reputable retailer of Dyson products.”
We often see “offers” on Facebook that turn out not to be real. Recent examples include nonexistent free food vouchers from Waitrose, Morrisons and Wetherspoons, and a very dubious prize draw for a holiday in Santorini.
We wrote about a very similar post last year, which claimed that Currys was selling the same hairdryer for £1.78. Currys also said the offer had nothing to do with them.
Image courtesy of Mouse2020
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because AO is not running a clearance sale of Dyson hairdryers.