Posts claiming to offer a ‘free Tesco meal deal’ aren’t genuine

We’ve seen a number of Facebook posts claiming Tesco is giving away “a free meal deal for every like”. But this is not a real offer.

The posts read: “It is with great pleasure as CEO of Tesco to announce we will be honoring 106 years this week with a free meal deal for every like.”

They also include an image of a man standing in front of a Tesco storefront, as well as an image of a meal deal and what appear to be vouchers for a “free Tesco meal deal”.

However, the supermarket chain told Full Fact that Tesco is “not running any social media activity of that nature”.

The man pictured is not Tesco’s CEO Ken Murphy, but actually a man called Darren Swain who was a Tesco store manager in 2015.

Another clue is the fact that the link the posts direct users to follow doesn’t lead to the official Tesco website.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Facebook posts falsely claiming supermarkets are giving away free food.

It is always worth checking posts sharing offers that seem too good to be true. One way to verify them is to see whether the offer has been shared by the company’s official page—this will often have more followers, a verified blue tick and a longer post history.