I guess things have not changed much.
I had a similar experience about a year ago. Bought a new license while the current license was still active. I registered the new license in the KIS application trusting that "You can enter a new activation code. The application will initiate automatic activation with this activation code after the current license expires".
About 2 months later I log into My Kaspersky and realized that the new license had been activated all along and since my current license was still valid I was using 2 licenses at the same time on the same hardware!
After contacting Kaspersky support, I was offered a new license. A few weeks later I realized that this new license had also been already activated by Kaspersky!
I gave up and salvaged whatever time was left on the new license after the original license expired.
My lesson learned is that I will keep all new licenses in a vault until needed.:sunglasses: