I am beginning to think that there are no such things as an anniversary upgrades. My family, including me, are Marco Polo members for 7 years (Silver/Gold for the past 2 years), and none of us have gotten anniversary upgrades.

I feel that it is more like when an op-up is required, instead of the agent saying, "you got op-up because the Y or J is overbooked,", they just say "you got op-up because it is your MP anniversary". It's just a change in wording, and to make members feel more appreciated.

On that note of MP Gold, One of my relatives got an email for CX saying something along the lines of "You have been especially selected by us to upgrade you to Gold tier", and he/she had less around 38K Club miles in that membership year. I wonder if there is some kind of internal system that ranks revenue over miles?