Well it's a good day if you work in Threadneedle Street but a bad day if you live in Acacia Avenue.

The learned justices of the Supreme Court have decided that the Office of Fair Trading was not in fact entitled to regulate the way that banks charge their customers for going overdrawn or having payments bounce back.

It really is a black day for the tens of thousands of bank customers, myself included, who were hoping the decision would go in their favour and they might recoup, on average, around £630 back from the banks in compensation.

But the muses have smiled on the banks once again and so customers who go into unauthorised overdraft or breach their agreed limit can be charged as much as £35 or more for a single bounced payment. Campaigners claim the actual cost to the banks could be as little as £2.50.

Banks had already paid out more than £559 million to customers in refunds of these charges before the claims were frozen in 2006. Since then it has been back and forth through the courts, with today's judgement the latest in the saga.

It has to be said that many banks have already re-structured these charges, though a lot of that has come about because around 45% of us are actually paying a monthly charge for our current account which allows the bank to be bit more generous with what they charge us for unauthorised infringements.

Strange thing is that all the pundits were calling it in the customers' favour, so this will come as a bit of a shock to many people. I had quite a bit riding on and was looking forward to a windfall. Oh, well.

So a big raspberry goes out to Abbey, Barclays, Clydesdale, Halifax Bank of Scotland and Lloyds TSB (now part of the same group) HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland Group and Nationwide Building Society.