Exactly, status pages tend to be updated by the humans responding to the incident, they're not automatic (that'd be pretty useless, you already know it's down, you want to know when they know it's down). Coordinating what to put on the status page when an incident happens can take time, getting the correct scope of impact from responding engineers etc.
Sorry, I'm not following you, how do you know it's down when the status page says it's all working? At that point you assume it's not down and start checking your own systems. They're just lying to avoid fallout; it's not better than an automated page.
"Humans responding to the incident" is what Twitter and email communications are for. Status pages are supposed to be realtime status, and they should show downtime as soon as users suspect it.
As a user, you often don't know if the vendor's system is really down or if there's something wrong with your own system.
