Argos £3 AirPod Max deal is fake

A post on Facebook claims: “Argos was fined for not paying taxes on time which caused them to start selling branded Airpods Max at the low price of £3.00 until the fine was paid !!!”

It features an image which appears to show boxes of the Apple headphones in an Argos store with £3 price labels on them.

Argos confirmed to Full Fact that this was not a genuine deal. The Argos website shows the product is actually currently priced at £549.

We can also find no evidence Argos was recently fined for not paying tax on time, as the post claims. A spokesperson for Argos told Full Fact: “Nothing in the post is factually correct.”

Argos has previously been fined by HMRC for something else. In 2017 it was reportedly ordered to pay £1.5 million, after it was found to have paid some workers less than minimum wage. This was reduced to £800,000 as the retailer agreed to pay within 14 days.

Following the link in the Facebook post takes users to a survey page which looks similar to the real Argos website, but isn’t official. The page has a different layout to the genuine Argos website, and a different web address. After answering survey questions, users are asked for personal details including their phone number, post code and email address.

This is very similar to other fake giveaway posts we’ve investigated in the past, where social media users are encouraged to submit extensive personal information before being allowed to enter a competition or access a deal. 

We have fact checked many posts like this on Facebook, which often claim that retailers like Argos, Tesco and Waitrose are selling heavily discounted electronics or are giving away freebies. On many occasions, they come with a request to fill in a survey.

Image courtesy of Mtaylor848