Rather than turning this into a discussion about Continental's automatic upgrades (very well covered in the Continental forum) I suggest that even though that is a prime example of what one passenger might perceive as benefit positive or neutral and another passenger might perceive as benefit negative, even without that one example, the argument is still valid based upon all of the other argumets.

I'd trade ANY benefit positive immediate changes for the stability of the program during the earning year. That (not a specific policy by a specific airline) is the crux of this discussion.