A TESCO customer has claimed she opened up her pasta bake to find a 769g plastic weight in place of her meal.
Lauren Costello was left baffled when she decided to open the £3.50 800g Chicken and Bacon Pasta Bake to cook last week and found the chunky box.
The confused shopper had bought the item from her local store in Bishop Auckland, County Durham, but ended up having to drive back to get it exchanged for pasta.
Video shows Lauren pulling back the cardboard packaging of the pasta dish to show a rectangle white box with screws on each corner.
The weight ‘769g’ has been written in black marker pen on the item which appears to have been put in place of the dish.
The film appears to have been opened but there is not one single trace of food inside.
Lauren shared the video to Facebook last week, writing: “Good job we weren’t hungry.”
She added: “They let us swap it with one that actually had pasta in.
“The lad in Tesco didn’t even know what it was.
“They think someone’s stolen the pasta and replaced it with the weight.
“They were like ‘you’d think if they were gonna do us over they’d at least pick a TV or something’.
“The weight probably cost them more than the pasta, it was only £3.50.”
Social media users were left baffled by the bizarre discovery.
Rachael Wright said: “Eh I honestly can’t believe it!”
Emily Morley said: “Come on this must be a joke now.”
Antalyaa Reid said: “I have so many questions.”
And Truda Watson said: “Do they think you’re on a diet? Take it back and get some compensation.”
Speaking today 23-year-old Lauren said: “We had bought the pasta bake and taken it home, preheated the oven only to realise when we opened it that there was a big block in with 769g written on it.
“We were obviously bewildered so took it straight back to the Tesco’s where the staff were even unsure what had happened.
“One of them had suggested that maybe someone had stolen the pasta and replaced it with the block but I had a feeling it was probably a factory fault of some sort.
“The staff allowed us to replace the pasta bake packet with this block in it with a real pasta bake this time.
“I pulled back the sleeve on to check had actual food in before I left.”
Tesco today (TUE) revealed that a test pack containing a weight block, used to ensure factory scales are working, was sent to the store through a human error.
They added that the supplier is now investigating how this occurred.
