I'm honestly relieved to not see anyone defending this system. Before the search feature went in, the wards were almost a game-breaking failure. Now they've been mitigated to an annoyance. But still, why do they exist? The very feature that improved them also proved how pointless they are. I'm searching through an auction house-like system anyway to find the item I want, it's organized by price, so I'm obviously going to buy the cheapest one.. why am I marking the retainers, transporting to the ward, finding the NPC, and buying it from them? It would be comically absurd if it wasn't so dreadfully stupid.

Retainers are great storage. They are atrocious zombie merchants. An AH would fix a lot of issues.