Tesco is giving away free TVs to people who share a Facebook post, or visit a link.
This is not true. The post does not come from Tesco’s Facebook account. Tesco has told us that it does not offer rewards for liking, sharing or commenting on posts.
A scam claiming to offer free TVs from Tesco is spreading widely on Facebook.
The post, from an account called “Tesco Fans” says: “We're about to chuck around 300-400 TV's that have been use for display TV's in our stores around the UK and therefore can't be sold. Instead of binning we thought we'd give them all away, sizes range from 42-65. If you want one then just make sure you have shared by Dec 16th!”
The same account also posted a link later the same day with the caption: “We're giving you all the opportunity to get a new TV, just go here … Good luck!”
The link leads eventually to a site which does not mention Tesco, but instead asks people to “enter some basic information and answer survey questions to continue towards your reward”.
The Facebook posts therefore appear to be part of a scam. Tesco says that scammers have impersonated it before. Its own Facebook page does not mention this offer.
The grammatical errors in the post’s offer are another clue that this is not a real message from Tesco.
Scams with poor grammar that require people to answer survey questions have been a common problem in the past.
Full Fact asked Tesco whether it was giving away free TVs. A spokesperson told us: “Tesco UK only has one Facebook page - facebook.com/Tesco. Any other page is potentially a scam and social media users should not click on them.
“We don't offer rewards for liking, sharing, and commenting on posts, so if you see this it isn’t genuine.”
The Take Five campaign led by UK Finance gives advice on how to protect yourself from online fraud while Action Fraud provides examples of current scams to be on alert for.
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 post is a hoax and does not come from Tesco.
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