It was changed in 2016, but not communicated very clearly: the shareholding plan will only kick status
on the first year.
Terms and conditions of Accor Shareholders Club membership
Note that it wasn't updated for the new level scheme (status/reward points):
Shareholding plan will give you instant Gold (used to be Platinum) but only for one year. A little bit like the "SPG Gold with 1 single Mastercard stay" Starwood promo.
Note that using the existing system, normal membership will give you a
LCAH card number #1, "upgrading" to Shareholder will give you a
LCAH card number #2 . If you ever decide to go for Accor Plus, and you have Platinum status, you'd have to
first unregister as a shareholder (losing card number
#2 ) to switch back to
LCAH card number #1 so that they issue your a new
Accor Plus card number #3.
It's a nightmarish system that will require several emails and phone calls to make it happen.
Oh, and it will completely break Accor PLACES as well, they haven't been able to fix my account in 6+ months.
Hopefully LCAH is moving to a single life-time card number soon. Not that they thing it's particularly smart, but they're running out of number with the current system!
Julien