A patron's account should update to the new expiration date when the account category is changed. Here is how it should work. User's has an account set with user category A. Category A expires in 2 months. User goes to the library and staff update the user's account to category B. Category B expires in 12 months. The user's account automatically updates from category A expiration date to category B (from 2 months to 12 months). This should work both ways, switching to category B to category A should reduce the expiration date from 12 months to 2 months.
I think this possibly needs to be optional. And we might need to think on how this should effect libraries that charge membership fees.
To explain why this might not work for everyone: Say a library charges annually for membership. There are 2 months until the patron account expires. The category is changed and the expiry date automatically extends to 12 months like suggested. => We charge membership fee, as this is a renew basically: 2 months lost. => We don't charge fee: 10 months for free. Maybe a pref or a confirmation message would work?
I like the confirmation message.
Any more thoughts on this? It really would be very useful when upgrading self-registered user accounts to full privilege accounts, much in the same way that the messaging preferences are changed when switching category types. Would probably work best as an optional setting to enable in sys preferences?