First you'll get no argument form me. With few exceptions, such as the OS, Apple's software largely sucks. It sucks less than most others, but still sucks. Ok we got that out of the way.

I'm not sure what the issue is/was, but I understood from the first message the following:

1. You wanted to retrieve the recording and place a copy on your computer
2. You wanted to delete the original from the iPhone


That should normally be straight forward. When I last used this feature the memos would appear under the iPhone in the source list on the left column every time I connected the phone to iTunes. Simply drag the memo to the desktop or into another playlist in iTunes.

I don't know if it was the case previously but now I notice that voice memos are listed under the music tab for syncing. I don't do any kind of automatic sync for music and never have, so in the reverse process from putting music onto the phone, I used to drag voice memos from the phone into iTunes.

HOWEVER...

Currently running the latest iOS 5.x voice memos are not appearing when I connect my iPhone to iTunes wirelessly. This seems to match what you were seeing. In fact I have 3 memos recorded over the past 2 years and I still don't see anything in iTunes about them. I do have a copy of the oldest one from back when this used to work and I copied it manually from the phone.

IMO, this is a bug. Surprise surprise. Ok, it could also be a (stupid) design decision (but I doubt it). There's also no way to pull photos and videos from an iPhone in iTunes. You have to use another program for that.

Solution: Use third-party software to retrieve the files - there are a half dozen or more iPhone file browsers available that should do the job. Then delete the memos from the Voice Memo app directly.