We are currently exploring adding an endpoint (and button on the UI) to request a backup directly instead of it being uploaded anywhere. We hope it can be part of the next Central release and I'll update the feature thread as we have more details.
Are you absolutely sure you couldn't have done some kind of administrative task to explain the behavior? We'll certainly look more into it and if you have any documentation that could point to this being expected, that would be very helpful. I have not heard of or experienced this.