Free checking gets rarer, survey finds
September 24, 2012 11:30PM
Updated: October 26, 2012 2:12PM
Truly free checking accounts are becoming rarer as banks add more fees to boost their profits. Only 39 percent of non-interest checking accounts are free to all customers, according to survey results released Monday by financial data publisher Bankrate.com. That’s down from 45 percent last year and 76 percent in 2009.
Among other fees, the average monthly service fee on checking accounts is a record $5.48, up 25 percent from the Bankrate survey a year ago.
Over 5M iPhones sold in three days
Apple Inc. said Monday that it sold more than 5 million units of the iPhone 5 in the three days since its launch, fewer than analysts had expected.
The sales tally is a record for any phone, but it beats last year’s iPhone 4S launch only by a small margin. Apple said then that it sold 4 million phones in the first three days.
Topeka Capital Markets analyst Brian White expected Apple to sell 6 million to 6.5 million iPhone 5s in the first three days. He said the shortfall was largely due to limited supply. White said the phone was sold out at 80 to 85 percent of the U.S. Apple stores he and his team contacted Sunday evening, and the ones that were still available were mostly Sprint models.
