Goodbye Wildfire!, Thankyou Goodbye!

Today sees the very last day of Wildfire! the voice activated voicemail service from Orange, that allows you to control the entire experience using your voice.
For example you could ring your voicemail on your handfree in the car and go:-
WF: Oh hello, you have 1 new message.
Me: What does it say,
WF: Wildfire plays message
Me: Give them a call.
WF: Dialling, WF then calls using the number they left
Once call is finished
WF: They hung up
Me: Call
WF: Call whom?
Me: Derek
WF: At which place, home, work, mobile or other?
Me: Work.
WF: Dialling...
and so it continued, seemless call handlnig throughout the entire journey, I only had to press and hold 1 to do all this at the beginning of the call.
Now the bright sparks at Orange, and the wonderful Chinese Wise Man think that rewarding their existing customers should be to discontinue this service BEFORE putting in any comparable replacement service. I had a wonderful letter from them explaining I was being UPGRADED to their standard service.
Hang on I paid £10 a few years ago to be UPGRADED from their standard service.
So now my voicemail experience will be on the road:-
VM: You have one new message.
Me: Press a button to play message.
VM: Press another button to return the call.
Me: Hang up from voicemail
Me: Locate Dereks phone number in phone whilst driving
Me: Dial number

What a difference a change of ownership can make to a company, when owned by Hutchinson Orange was an innovative company with many unique selling points over their rivals, France Telecom have reduced this to your run of the mill network which now fails to compete on price against the likes of Vodafone or indeeed network reliability, especially 3g.

"Goodbye Wildfire, thankyou goodbye!"