This is correct. I'm referring to the registrar-registry relationship and not customer-registrar relationship. In .com,.net,.org for example auto renew occurs

This is correct. I'm referring to the registrar-registry relationship and not customer-registrar relationship. In .com,.net,.org for example auto renew occurs at 12am the day of expiration. However, for some of the odd ones like .be if you haven't issued a renew command 30 days prior to expiration then its the same as issuing a delete on the day of expiration and have it immediately take effect (normally domains go into pendingDelete status for a limited amount of time before actually being deleted). Also to clarify .be is a ccTLD not a gTLD and so they have a different set of standards and rules as far as ICANN is concerned. I would love it if all domains would just auto renew by the registry and we'd send the delete command if customers didn't want them. Its what I want for christmas :)