Form submissions saved outside of contact records (CSV?)

Here's the situation we have.

We had a OP sales form with billing address and mailing address. I added the mailing address fields from an OP dropdown. I assumed that meant OP had fields to map them into.

But now OP support is telling me I was supposed to make fields with the field editor prior, and then map the form fields to them.

I assumed if OP was suggesting a field from a dropdown (Maling Address, Mailing Zip Code, etc) then they existed in the contact record. But since they didn't, these field submissions didn't get saved anywhere. Just lost into the void.

So now we have to contact all the buyers and re-collect info they already submitted.

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My suggestions:

First of all, if OP is going to suggest a field like this, it should be a default field! Super unintuitive.

Second, there should be a form submissions page where I can see all submissions for any form. It should not ONLY be saved in the contact record. Let me just see them in a table or download a CSV. I can't believe this is the case.

Every form plugin I've ever used stored every field somewhere and made it easy to access, except for OP.

Even if I just added some random text field like "Favorite Pizza Topping" it should save it somewhere. I shouldn't need to have created a field with the field editor prior.

If I am misunderstanding how this works then the CS rep I talked to has misled me.