A USPS notice published October 19 lays out two different ways the Postal Service would keep customer-service records, with retention periods of six months for one category and ten years for another. If you're following up on an unresolved problem, that's a reason to keep track of how you contacted USPS, along with what you were told.
The proposal would create a centralized Privacy Act system called USPS 830.100, Customer Call Center. Within that system, the notice pairs each record category with a way of finding it:
Customer Call Center records are retrieved by Interaction ID and retained for six months. Web-based retail phone records, covering retail customers' talk and text inquiries, are retrieved by phone number and name and retained for ten years.
That ten-year period belongs to the web-based retail phone category. It does not apply to all USPS calls. The listed web-based records include text-message contents, transcribed voicemails and call logs.
And the system's stated purposes extend beyond answering a customer's question. USPS lists agent coaching, performance metrics, AI-supported operations and quality-assurance audits. It covers callers as well as call-center employees and agents. Those are listed purposes and categories, not confirmation that every capability is already running or that each conversation creates every kind of record.
For your own follow-up, keep a dated note of the channel you used and what was said or agreed. Save your own messages. If you're speaking with an agent, ask whether there's an interaction ID available and write it down if they provide one.
That's a practical suggestion based on the notice, not a USPS instruction. An ID doesn't guarantee access. The notice directs customers seeking to learn whether the system holds information about them to write to the system manager with identifying information; access requests also follow USPS identity-verification rules.
The changes are scheduled to take effect November 18, 2026, unless comments received on or before that date lead to a contrary determination. Until then, this is a proposed records system. Your own notes can still give you something specific to refer to when you follow up.