The renewal verification process is fired up once a week, because it may
take quite a lot of time to complete and it doesn't really matter if you
are asked to renew 363 or 369 days after you subscribed. So things never
happen "instantly", but should happen within one week. Some servers have
a locally edited WAKEPARM FILE and may never run this process at all, if
the postmaster decided it was not needed (for instance because he runs 10
lists totalling 89273 subscribers and none of them requires renewal). The
reference date is internally present in the list regardless of the value
of the "Renewal=" keyword, but tends to get reset when subscribers show
some "activity". The purpose of the renewal function is to take care of
dead or inactive accounts, and not of people who are fully aware of the
fact that they are subscribed, so I chose to avoid bothering active
subscribers as much as possible.
Eric