Claim: Decathlon staff can buy discounted North Face backpacks through a private company website for GH¢30.96.
Source: Facebook
Verdict: Hoax
Researched by Samuel Nii Adjetey
A Facebook user, Efua Kusi, claims that Decathlon Ghana employees had access to a private website where they could get The North Face backpacks for as little as GH¢30.96 by completing a short survey.
In a Facebook post published on June 24, 2025, she said: “I no longer work for Decathlon, and to be honest, I have nothing to lose. They fired me just because I refused to work on my day off without pay, which is completely unfair. But there is something they never wanted anyone to talk about.
“All employees had access to a private website where we could get a The North Face backpack for almost nothing. All we had to do was answer a short survey and make a small payment. They never advertised it, but the page is still active. I got another one just yesterday. All I did was answer a few questions and pay GHS 30.96 including shipping.”
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The post has since gained traction on Facebook, with several users engaging with the claim and the link allegedly leading to the offer. The claim suggests an ongoing benefit or loophole linked to a private Decathlon employee benefit platform.
This fact-check will verify the authenticity of the claim.
Fact-check
GhanaFact ran a step-by-step analysis of the link attached to the message to view the contents on the internal platform.
Initial attempts to access the link showed that it leads to a website that has a product review published in 2018 with the title “The North Face Recon Is An Ideal Backpack If You Travel With A Lot Of Electronics.”
To investigate the URL given in the post, GhanaFact used the archiving tools archive.fo, Wayback Machine and Ghost Archive to check if there was a website with the same URL on any of the platforms, but found no results.
The link was further run through virustotal.com, a security website that scans links and files for malicious code. The scan classified the link as malicious and phishing.
According to Proofpoint.com phishing is “a common type of cyber attack that targets individuals through email, text messages, phone calls, and other forms of communication.
“A phishing attack aims to trick the recipient into falling for the attacker’s desired action, such as revealing financial information, system login credentials, or other sensitive information,” it adds.
WHOIS information of the domain – https://backpack-quiz.com/decathlon.gh, reveals that the website was registered on May 16, 2025, updated on the same day and set to expire in May 2026.
The registrars of the domain employed the services of privacyguardian.org to hide their original information, a usual modus operandi of malicious website operators.
On June 23, 2025, Decathlon Ghana issued a statement on their official Facebook page debunking the claim.
“There is no such offer from Decathlon Ghana. Any claims suggesting otherwise are false and should be disregarded,” the company stated, urging the public to avoid suspicious links and visit their official website for verified information.
The fact that the disclaimer was posted three days before the post we flagged, indicates that the company has routinely issued disclaimers when the scam is circulated. One such disclaimer was posted in February 2025 on Decathlon Ghana’s official instagram account.
Based on the information provided above, the message claiming that Decathlon staff could buy discounted North Face backpacks through a private company website for GH¢ 30.96 is a scam.
Verdict
Therefore, the link is phishing, and the Facebook message is a HOAX.
