NatWest calls off legal attack dogs

Moving with the speed of an injured rock, NatWest has finally withdrawn its legal threats against a student advice site.

118student.co.uk offers advice to students and has pages reviewing all the major banks' student accounts. Site owner Peter Hale was shocked to receive a letter accusing him of abuse of trademarks and attempting to pass his site off as part of NatWest.

Oddly, the letter from the "Natwest Trademark Abuse Department" referred to Natwest rather than the trademarked NatWest.

We spent last week trying to get information out of the bank without success but Hale did finally hear back on Friday.

The bank confirmed the letter was genuine and apologised for the slow response.

The email said: "I have examined your website and agree that you are not deliberately trying to deceive our customers and, to the contrary, are seeking to provide an informative website for students ... I appreciate that the e-mail sent to you by our agents may have created unnecessary alarm and I can only apologise for this. Please be assured that we will be feeding this back to our agents."

The email requested an update to include the generous addition of a free railcard to its student offering, and a line making clear the site had no connection to the bank. ®