[Cyclefrance]

Bringing this back to the original issue (well trying to - time to draw the proverbial line I think M & B...), in today's paper an article reporting how a guy who had been charged ridiculous admin charges by his bank every time a direct debit was cancelled because of insufficient funds was given out of court settlement by the offending (offensive?) bank of £5,000 - double the amount they had charged him originally.

Clearly the bank did not want a legal judgement on this as we have a law known as the 'Unfair Terms and Contracts' legislation - if they lost in court that could cost them a fortune from all those guys who pay up without a fight. The guy argued that the charges were not represanative of what it cost the bank and that they were an unfair profit-making scheme and an unrealistic penalty. Seems a transferrable argument to me....

Don't take what is being demanded as set in stone. Rules laid down by suppliers aren't always right or upheld by the Courts. There may be mileage in your problem yet. Just because the supplier says you should pay a ridiculous level of interest to settle an old debt doesn't mean you are therefore bound to do so. The capital will be hard to argue as not owing, but I reckon the rest is potentially negotiable. Worth the effort, I reckon, to spend a few hours arguing, if the result could be a few hunderd $ saving...