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In what sense - all you have stated is that you can void a contract if the banks alter it to your detriment by increasing their charges. I do not see that this is any help here. Unless they change their charges after you open the account, the banks haven't altered any contract to your detriment - and even if they do change their charges, and they notify you of that change before they apply them, (which will also be one of the terms, that they can do that) you have the option to close your account and go elsewhere if you don't agree to the new charges, so you do not have to pay them. By not doing so you accept the new charges as part of your contract, and they have not been uinilaterally applied. I do not see what you are arguing is relevant. My point is that what is unfair is that the banks can unilaterally choose which way they are going to charge you, by paying an item and charging you for this alleged service, which you may not have wanted, or by declining it and charging you a penalty for doing so, which is illegal under common law. But this is a secondary arguement to use anyway. The primary arguement is that the payments are always penalty charges, and never charges for a service.

In my opinion the argument set out in the guidance notes to counter the banks' potential argument that their charges are for a service and not penalty charges i.e. "that under s.15 Supply of Goods Act the cost of the service is required to be reasonable" - and that it would not be reasonable for the bank to charge an excessive amount for a service which is highly automated is weak and dangerous. Weak because the banks publish their charges; they provide you with details of their charges for services when you open an account and notify you when they change, giving you the option to discontinue your contract if you don't like them. By continuing to hold an account you implicitly agree to any new charges notified to you for a service offered, however high. Dangerous because you are agreeing that the charge is for a service. Do not do it, if a bank were to win on that point it would set a dangerous precedent. The whole basis on which people win these cases is that these charges are not for a service (which would be legal, however high, if you have agreed to them) but are penalty charges. You have to argue that they are penalty charges, which are illegal under common law and the UTCCR, and not that they are excessive charges for a service, not agreed in advance. The argument is that by providing an overdraft of £101 when you have an agreed limit of £100, the bank is not providing you with any additional service. but penalising you for going over the limit, and their charge for the overdraft service is the interest you pay. You can also argue that clauses which allow for the bank to decide unilaterally to allow some items to be paid, (incurring for you unauthorised overdraft fees), while declining others (incurring penalty charges for returned items) is unfair under the UTCCR, as it is unbalanced to the detriment of the consumer. Given the choice you would probably opt for any item which would take you over your overdaft limit to be declined. Any charge for doing this is clearly a penalty charge, as no service is provided to you, and is therefore unenforecable.

All very well, but judging by the numbers of recent posters who say they are requesting statements for six years, in order to claim charges for six years, this information has not been effectively disseminated

Can I ask why everyone is limiting themselves to charges levied over the past six years. The Limitations Act 1980 allows for the period to take action to recover charges to be extended to six years from the point at which you could reasonably have been expected to know that you could make a claim. Since the banks have been claiming that the charges they apply are legitimate and lawful, and not excessive penalty charges (as they still do), a lay person could not reasonably have been expected to know any different, to know that they are in fact unlawful, and that they could go to court to claim them back. The banks' customers have relied on what their banks have told them in this respect, and because of this have not believed that they had any cause to refuse to pay the banks' charges, or to take them to court to recover any excessive charges which had been applied - until stories began to appear in the media. The limitation on taking action I would suggest runs for six years from when you read an article or saw a news item which suggested that what your bank told you about its charges being lawful was not in fact true, when you first became aware of this fact This would allow you to claim for all charges the banks have applied to your account, back past six years from now.