Following the good advice on this thread and a couple of PMs explaining things in small words to me (thanks
Raffles 
), I requested the status match...and got nothing. So I submitted it again...and got nothing again.
So I emailed BA who came back saying that yes, my match had been processed I now had Gold for the remainer of this year and for the next (ie to middle of 2014 in my case). However my Membership year end date etc didn't change
I followed that up via email and was told that the following year's membership would show on my account once the current membership year ends. That seems quite different to what a lot of others are experiencing.
Has anyone else been given this answer when matching? While I have no reason to doubt the advice from the BA rep (I have copies of emails and a case reference confirming the above), I really don't want to have to go through another series of exchanges next year.