How does preferred status get updated?

according to https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/star-wars/star-wars-the-old-republic/swtor-free-to-play-faqs/

"If you are a Free-to-Play player, as soon as you make any Cartel Coin purchase, you’re upgraded to Preferred Status. This means you will have a total of 12 character slots by default, just like current Preferred Status players."

I bought the coins directly from the website and already made a purchase in the Darth Malgus server. This was 12 days ago, but I'm not  Preferred Status yet...

My account is UnfortunateSage