I can't really say what's normal or not. I can only comment on what I know about and that's that customers with data in our archive can download their data in whatever format they want(options including PST available) for free as long as they do it themselves. If they want us to put it on a disk for them , post it to them etc, then we charge for the labor involved which does stack up.
Putting both your email and the archive on the one platform has it's obvious risks, including an exacerbation of the one you've fallen into here.
Are you sure that's the case and you can't get PST's?
I am certain we cannot get PSTs I had it told to me by my account rep as well as one of the heads of the professional services team. Even though they can ingest PST files when you move to their archiving platform, they do not have a...