There may be a clamp of sorts, or at least a notional legal restriction, on the typically open-ended language in contracts for banking services that allow the supplier to recover costs incurred.The Australian Treasury yesterday published a discussion paper on a uniform consumer law.One aspect of proposed laws limiting "unfair contracts" relates to financial services.Specifically, the discussion paper targets contract terms that require consumers to pay more than "reasonable enforcement costs reasonably incurred".The discussion paper asserts that this style of open-ended term "provides no incentive for suppliers to be reasonable or efficient."Bank critics would also say they encourage banks to fatten margins on fees that notionally cover costs but on which banks cannot establish the costs incurred.Long-running controversy relates to the penalty fees (often between $30 and $50) charged when a payment is returned or even when an account is overdrawn, charges that are at odds with the apparent costs incurred. Some banks have addressed this by reducing penalty fees on some items to $10.This issue is also at the heart of current controversy over decisions by ANZ, National and Westpac to continue to charge a foreign ATM fee of 50 cents from next month, even though they had (grudgingly) acceded to fee reforms in this sector that were intended to eliminate these fees.