500 people who share and comment on a post can be in with a chance of winning a £750 M&S voucher.
The competition is not genuine, and the images are of M&S ‘golden tickets’ given out to the first shoppers in new M&S shops.
A widely shared post on Facebook claims that Marks & Spencer is giving away £750 vouchers to 500 people who share and comment on it. But in reality this ‘competition’ is not affiliated with M&S and does not appear to be genuine.
The post shows a woman that it claims is “Sarah Louise, Chief Marketing Officer” holding cards that say “Golden Ticket Giveaway”. The post says: “For Christmas this year we have decided to reward 500 people who have shared then commented with a golden envelopes [sic]. Inside each golden enveloper is £750 to spend at M&S.”
A spokesperson for Marks & Spencer confirmed this competition wasn’t affiliated with the company.
There are several clues that this giveaway isn’t real.
First of all, although the page sharing it is called M&S, if you look closely, it only has 146 likes and isn’t verified, unlike the genuine Marks & Spencer Facebook page, which has 5.7 million likes.
Secondly, Marks & Spencer’s food marketing director is a woman called Sharry Cramond, not “Sarah Louise”.
The photo of the woman in the Facebook post originates from a 2019 blog written about a newly opened M&S food hall in Northern Ireland. The blog says the pictured tickets were handed out to the first 200 customers.
Other newly opened Marks & Spencer outlets have also given out “golden tickets” to their first 200 customers. The tickets give shoppers anything from a single free item to a £200 M&S voucher.
The second picture in the Facebook post shows an open golden ticket that says: “Congratulations, you’ve won £5 off your food shop when you spend £25 today”, so not the £750 voucher the post is touting. This picture has previously been used to illustrate other branches of M&S opening and offering the tickets.
You can read more about how to spot misleading images and how to find the original version of pictures you see online in our guide.
This is one of many fake posts we’ve seen claiming to be retailers giving out vouchers, prizes or low cost deals on products.
Image courtesy of Marks & Spencer
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 the competition is not a genuine M&S giveaway.
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