Timely... At work we use RapidSSL (a division of GeoTrust) for a handful of certs. Last night I received an email with a banner warning me, "Your certificate is ABOUT TO EXPIRE". The email goes on to list the expiration date as "Oct 12, 2011". Four months is certainly generous notice, but I've always taken this as a simple marketing attempt to maintain customer loyalty. Usually I take these emails as tickler reminder…
You might be interested to know they're even cheaper when purchased through a reseller, e.g.: http://www.namecheap.com/ssl-certificates/geotrust-ssl-certi... I suppose they think that since you're visiting their site directly, you wouldn't think (or know) to visit one of their reseller partners instead.
Pretty standard operating procedure here and highly unlikely to be a comment on their customer's web savvy. :)