>>kevmar+(OP)
I don’t love GoDaddy, but I recently had a payment issue like OP and they notified me several times in the month leading up to my domain entering the grace period. I didn’t see and/or ignored those emails until my domain entered the grace period (and my domain stopped working) so I had to contact customer support. I didn’t have a penalty for renewing while in the grace period (.com in the US), but the support agent was fast and helpful. It was totally on me.
Of course, these emails may not have been delivered to OP for one reason or another. If that’s truly the case, it could be a technical error on GoDaddy’s side, or a filtering/mail issue on OPs side.