What was claimed
IKEA is giving away free boxes of leftover products to people who answer questions online.
Our verdict
False. IKEA confirmed this is not a genuine offer.
IKEA is not giving away boxes of free products
Facebook posts claiming the retailer IKEA is giving away free boxes of “leftover stock from warehouses” to people who fill in a survey and pay a shipping fee are false.
A spokesperson for IKEA confirmed to Full Fact that these offers aren’t genuine.
One post says: “Unbelievable! IKEA is giving away home items for free?! Every year, the company refreshes its collections and gives away leftover stock from warehouses! And now every resident in the UK can get a box filled with stylish home products completely free!”.
It then encourages Facebook users to follow a link to “grab” their box, and also lists examples of items people can apparently receive, such as vases, towels and candles.
The post also features a video, in which a voiceover and text says “So many people here in the UK still don’t know that IKEA gives away leftover items from past seasons for free every year”, and claims to have received boxes of brand new goods for several years.
The voiceover claims “all you need to do is visit IKEA’s website and answer a few simple questions”, and that people “only pay the shipping cost, nothing else”.
Other posts feature different wording but also encourage users to click on a link to claim free IKEA products.
Although the link included in some of the posts takes users to a website that features the IKEA logo and tells people they “have the chance to win an IKEA Mystery Box”, it does not take users to the real IKEA website, and we couldn’t find evidence of this offer on IKEA’s actual site.
We’ve fact checked similar posts on Facebook offering fake deals from other retailers. Examples include false offers for various laptops, PlayStations and airfryers, which were supposedly available at improbably cheap prices, as well as boxes of other products.
It is always worth checking posts sharing offers that seem too good to be true. One way to verify whether an offer is real is to see whether it has been shared by the 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.
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 IKEA confirmed this is not a genuine offer.