Factly noticed a few scams on social media involving famous retail chains that give gifts to users as Christmas season gifts. One such post is being widely shared on Facebook, which claims that any user who writes ‘Morrisons’ under the post and share they will be given three Cadbury selection boxes. Let’s check the claim made in this post.
Claim: Morrisons is giving away three Cadbury selection boxes to anyone who writes ‘Morrisons’ in the post and shares it.
Fact: Morrisons has not officially announced this scheme via its social media or website. A few years ago, when claims like this went viral, Morrisons warned customers not to fall for social media posts that claim to give away a free voucher if they like, share and comment “Thank you Morrisons”. Therefore, the claim made in the publication is FALSE.
To verify the veracity of the claim, we did a reverse image search on the post image, which did not turn up any relevant information. We noticed “Morrisons Warrington” written on the supermarket’s welcome board and looked to see if Diana Reid was the manager, as the post claims. This did not lead us to any credible evidence to conclude.
We then reviewed Morrisons’ verified social media profiles (here, here and here) and the official website to check if they have made any official announcements about giving away Cadbury’s Pick Boxes to social media users. But we didn’t find any kind of ads.
On further investigation, we found that Morrisons has warned its customers not to fall prey to scams that promise exciting gifts for liking, sharing and commenting on social media posts. News about it can be read here and here. The official scam alerts issued by Morrisons can be seen here and here.
Facebook warns its users to always be on the lookout for “unverified pages that claim to represent a large organization or public figure.” The viral post was made by a Facebook page called Morrisons Club, Fans which is not verified and its first post was made on November 13, 2022. From all this, we can conclude that this is a scam post .
Similar fraudulent Christmas offers were previously debunked by Factly:
1. This purported “M&S” promotional message offering golden ticket giveaways as part of Christmas celebrations is false
2. Fraudulent link is shared as “Amazon” website offering Christmas gifts
3. This so-called “Ramraj Cotton” website running a contest to give away Rs 20,000 is fraudulent
In short, multiple fraudulent offers are being shared as freebies ahead of Christmas celebrations