1) Might depend on service provider handling the domains, 2) Company bureaucracy and organizational incompetence - the one who gets the reminder does not have a clue what it means.

Credit card attached to the registrar account expires/gets canceled and the reminder emails go to an email address no one is monitoring.

My registrar always sends me a shit-ton of emails before actually canceling a domain. It's actually kind of annoying because sometimes I want to release a domain and there's no way to turn off the reminders. (I still consider this a feature.)

Yeah I'd say feature. Emails are easy to delete, hard to get back a domain you have lost.

I thought it was annoying as well, then I lost one. Luckily it was something I could change easily.

In my case, make stupid decisions, get stupid prizes.