I must disagree with your comments about these companies fleecing customers. It is quite legitimate for a business to review its credit lines annually and charge for such a review, this is common practice in the commercial banking market and will become more prevalant in personal banking as customers can no longer expect to receive a completely free service from banks.

The personal banking market has been completely free to the vast majority of customers being subsidised by income banks earn in commerical markets, interest rates etc. With these income streams being hit heavily as a result of the recession the banks have to look at ways of recovering income and one of the ways to do this is to remove the concessions it offers personal customers.

When the OFT case into unfair bank charges is complete I forecast the end of free banking in the UK (one of the few free banking countries left) as the banks can no longer afford to offer an expensive service to customers completely free of charge particularly when this has historically been subsidised by 'unfair' bank charges on those who cannot manage their accounts.