There only seems to be a handful who remembers retainer monthly fee structured back in 2010. This was never implemented because monthly fee service was suspended for FFXIV 1.0 till January 2012, and even then they didn't get everything in order yet. We weren't even suppose to have two retainers, only the first one was suppose to be free.

http://lodestone.finalfantasyxiv.com...yopemeopw.html
Retainers - As before, and until the release of Version 2.0, players will be entitled to employ two Retainers at no charge.
* The fee structure for after the release of FINAL FANTASY XIV Version 2.0 (including those of retainers) is unconfirmed at the time of writing.
I can't find a primary source, but I remember it was $1 USD for 1 retainer, which spans across all your characters on your account.
http://ffxiv.zam.com/forum.html?foru...07785645538689

Also I remember, mentioned somewhere, the extra cost was mainly because of servicing the extra data which is accompanied by adding 1 additional retainer across all your characters. Though, I could be wrong on this.

What people should be surprised with instead, is the venture system that retainers will have come 2.2.
While little details are known, you can see that it requires some sort of in-game currency to pay the retainer to spend hours to obtain a negligible amount of raw resources.
This means the player having to do something in-game to earn that in-game currency to pay off the retainer so they can venture out to farm for you.
No where does it mention of paying real money to buy in-game gil, or another in-game currency so you can venture out.

I guess people don't really care that an NPC is playing a bit of the game for you, regardless if buy extra retainers or not.
But are more hung up on the fact that additional retainers cost extra on top of the basic monthly fee.