Mike,
While I can empathize with the point of your post, everyone needs to remember that it is one thing for you to call/text/email a company and give them the referral without getting a thank you, but quite another to give the contact information to the prospect and having them call the referred company without ever hearing back.
Most of the time a referred customer calls, they either don't let me know who they have been referred from, give me the wrong individual that referred them, or they say they found me through my website or some other form of advertising. It isn't until months later when I'm talking with the individual that referred my services, that I find out they thought it was a referral from them. In today's information age, it's possible that the client did find me on their own, but ended up speaking with the referring company first. This makes it almost impossible to say "Thank You or at least let them know I've contacted them" to the referring company unless the company contacts me directly. Otherwise, I'm at the mercy of the prospect for sharing that information with me and even then based on my schedule I may forget to thank them or if the client is a PIA I may not want to thank them.
I've also had multiple times when I've given a referral to a prospect that "didn't know there were others that did this kind of work" only to hear that they already had the other company's number/contact information or wanted to know if they were the same company they already contacted (email or phone message or actually talked with).
One of the best ones was a referral to another company that they already had a quote from, but "couldn't find anyone" which is why they had called me. I found out about it when I asked the referred company if they had gotten a call or not.