It's been a while since I used my charge card for elite status with SPG, but when I was doing it that way, it seemed to me that there were years when the status seemed to automatically continue without any intervention on my part and other times when I was bounced down without warning and discovered it only when I made my next reservation or (much worse) upon arrival at a Starwood hotel. It might have been that my wonderful personal travel agents were just taking the steps to renew the status without telling me.