A Navan man was left red-faced last week after his debit card was declined in a shop all because he was ultra-cautious in attempting to avoid being scammed.

He told Meath Live, ‘ I couldn’t understand why the card wouldn’t work as I knew for certain there was enough money in my account to cover my purchase.

‘Then it dawned on me that a few days before I had got a text message purporting to be from AIB but because of all the warnings about scammers on TV and in the papers I assumed it as a scam attempt and ignored it.

‘The first message queried a transaction on my account and the second one said they had blocked my card, both just the kind of thing scammers do.

‘I called AIB and was amazed to find out that the text was actually genuine, it just shows you that you can be too careful it also illustrates how accurate the scammers are with their texts as they are almost word for word the same as the genuine ones something I found out to my cost.’