Auto-opt in for Thrive is costing me R240+ and counting

Auto-opt in for Thrive cost me R240+ and counting. Today, I sold shares on one of my portfolios to move it to a better portfolio. I saw that the funds available to me was R0. I thought I mistakenly selected something that would have the money moved to my bank account. Then I deposited money into my TFSA and saw that about R25 was missing from the amount. In confusion, I went to look at my transaction history only to discover I was being charged R25 a month for Thrive for almost a year now.

I asked to opt out of Thrive but was told it is built in. When I signed up, none of this existed and I never signed anything or opted into anything that spoke about Thrive.

What is weird is how I have never picked this up for almost a year despite me filing for tax and getting tax certificates from their website.

I have reported this to the FCSA as well and hope they will do something about it. If not, I will need to withdraw everything and stick to other platforms like Avanza and speak to my financial advisers about where to put my money next (yes, I am consciously paying advice fees which I'm happy to do when it's transparent and wasn't done unknowingly).

@Waylon Smit - I hope you understand the importance of brand building and client experience in driving financial stability for the business. There is a great case study from Netflix where they could have continued to charge their customers a subscription fee after the free trial period ended without notification. Instead the CFO went with the option to rather let the business lose USD21 million in revenue in the name of brand building and CX by reminding customers that the subscription fee would commence post free trial. Yet their CLV increased by USD139 million.