On October 28 I emailed PSA Customer Service asking if it would be possible to get results from my two earliest Pokemon submissions in 2000. I attached photos of carbon copies of the original submission forms so they’d have all the numbers and dates they could possibly need. I got this not too unexpected automated response:
**“Due to high email volumes, we will be able to respond personally to your question within approximately 5-7 business days.”**It took longer of course; I didn’t get an answer until November 16. The bottom line reply was no and the reason given was funny:
"Our online database only goes back as far as 2011"
I find this pretty remarkable, since for many years that data was on my PSA Set Registry page and the idea there would have been a dump of archived data at some point seems shortsighted and irresponsible.
The 2011 part is funny because even now the “orders” tab on my PSA Registry page brings up submissions going back to 2002, seven of which were before 2011.
Keeping data costs a lot of money and resources. While they keep the card population data, there is no incentive for keeping customer submission data that’s over a decade old. Converting paper scans from 2 decades ago to digital cost even more money and makes even less sense for them.
Maybe it exists on some archived tape, but I’m sure they aren’t going to spend hours digging that up.
GDPR and California regulations have also started putting restrictions on how long data is kept. I imagine those carbon copies contain your personal identifiable information. So keeping it for a less amount of time is not only a financial inventive, it also is better for them from a legal perspective.
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