Presumably, you mean that a "revalidation" is what you do between "t minus 3m" and "t plus 3m", whereas a "renewal" is what you do after "t plus 3m", where "t" is the anniversary of your IR skills test.
I don't think many people realise that if they let their IR lapse to the t+3m point, they get captured by an FTO/ATO, and they are back in the "need one more flight, I think" situation which they were so glad to escape from all those years ago

This also has a big effect for private aircraft owners because if they let it go to t+3m they will be very limited as to which ATO is willing to process them. Most FTOs/ATOs do not work with customer aircraft, and the vast majority of non UK ones won't touch an N-reg.
I also don't think many people realise that flying on an ICAO IR no longer preserves the JAA IR, and after 7 years you have to do the IR exams, the 50/55hrs dual training, and the skills test all over again

This is one of the biggest pieces of stupidity to come out of EASA.
Not many people realise just how tightly EASA has shafted the private IR community with the above moves, and I am not talking about N-reg. A private
JAA IR holder can no longer afford to let the renewal lapse "for a bit" because he is temporarily unable to get his hands on a suitable aircraft (and renting a different type for the renewal will definitely cost him a packet due to type-retraining costs) or is happy to not fly IFR for a few months.
This stretches to "trivia" like GPS database updates. A lot of people stretch their update subscription in the winter because they may not be doing many Eurocontrol flights then. But if your reval comes up in the winter, you have to update the database for the flight.
Or you do what the FTOs have been doing for years, to avoid having to teach GPS approaches, which is to say to the FE "the database is not current so we have to fly conventionally only"
I cannot help thinking the FTO industry has been behind this, as a quid pro quo (a revenge, more likely) for getting their revenues "thinned" by the CBM IR proposal.