How not to do things

I'm loathe to write this b/c I don't typically disparage things which I enjoy.  Yet if you want to know how to make a Really sucky voice user interface, make a crappy web site or screw just about anything else up, look no further than XM Radio .

you call in and you get to talk to Kaitlyn.  If you want to pay a bill or get a signal refreshed, she works fine. Otherwise, forget it.  She has very limited options and none of them are "Talk to a human that can help me".  Then she transfers you and it's not uncommon to experience 20+ minute wait times.  But that whole time, it sounds like totally dead air.

Right now, I've been sitting here for 30+ minutes on the phone. I have 6 XM Radios and am annoyed enough it's about to go to 0.  Hopefully, when I finally do get through to someone, they won't be as incompetent as every other person at XM I've had to deal with in support. 

I get so annoyed waiting on the phone that I often will send an email. It's great. It takes you away from your account page to an unsecured part of the site. Then it asks you a bunch of questions, and at the end, it asks you for a radio id or account #, and won't let you submit the email without those. Problem is, they are on the page they just navigated you away from.

How can a service as cool as XM suck in every single other regard as bad as they do?

UPDATE :

 Well, I have to issue a correction to some extent. They were having some service problems and the outages were widespread.  Because of this, their call volume was through the roof and we were experiencing delays way longer than usual.  I guess I buy this.