You should be able to negotiate a MUCH lower repayment, if you are looking at a one-off lump sum. Approach Suttcliffe and make an offer - preferably MUCH lower than you can actually afford - and see what they say. If they don't accept, haggle! You can then always leave it for a few months, and try again. As for bank charges, you should total them all up, covering the last 6 years, and then file claims with the banks. Unless you can plead poverty/hardship, the banks will merely acknowledge your claim, and do nothing about it, pending OFT court case in January. If you are genuinely in financial trouble, start a court action, and see where that goes - there seems to be no consistency in the English legal system, which is, of course, the envy of the world! Good luck.

I've taken up cudgels on behalf various friends, and Lloyds have settled every time, as have NatWest. This judgement has no merit, and an appeal would sort the issue out, for which reason it is highly unlikely that the bank will go to appeal. On the other hand, my view is that we should start a fighting fund, and be prepared to employ the services of the best barrister possible (Richard Colbey comes to mind), just for the first appeal case, should it ever come to that. If Bankfodder, or any of the moderators/administrators want to get involved in a structured action, please let us know. Meantime, don't panic - the judge was asleep when he made this decision.

Neil, It may help you if you read OFT's report on credit card charges. Essentially, the banks' charges are against the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 (UTCCR); and there is no apparent loss to the banks when customers breach their borrowing limits. All that happens is that interest continues to be charged, and is either eventually repaid, or the bank sues the customer for not repaying the borrowings. It is open to the lender to simply not honour any cheques, SOs, DDs, etc., if they would take the customer over their given credit limit. The lender doesn't have to send letters, etc., to inform you that you have breached the limit - they have set up that particular system purely in order to try and justify their punitive charges. If they have suffered any losses, it is entirely of their own design! Of course, being a wunch of greedy, amoral and thoroughly unpleasant bankers, they have already covered themselves by pricing their activities so as to make exorbitant profits across a range of their products and "services". In other words, they already overcharge their customers, and then adding separate punitive charges means that they profit twice from some of their more unfortunate customers. Dealing with their customers' accounts is part and parcel of their everyday activities as a bank, and that includes sorting out any issues with customers breaching their borrowing limits. If a customer refuses to repay what they owe, then the banks, like everyone else, need to take legal action to recover what the court decides is rightfully theirs - not just decide that customers should pay whatever figure enters the bankers' devious little brain. They haven't got a leg to stand on - and if they do turn up in court, and the judge gets it wrong, the OFT and/or other interested parties WILL ensure that penalty charges are consigned to the bin! Good luck, Em

Common misconception. Banks' charges aren't illegal - yet - as a Court hasn't declared them such. Until that happens, we may THINK that they are; and the banks may AGREE with our thinking; but they will carry on unless a Court tells them that they can't. Ombudsman cannot make a ruling on the legality of the banks' position, only on whether the banks have adhered to their own rules and procedures. Be sure that one of these days, all this will come to a head. Til then, keep fighting.