Hundreds of people who bought Microsoft"s hot new Xbox game console over the holidays received defective systems, and some say they waited for weeks before the devices were fixed.
Analysts said the number of flawed consoles is probably too small to spell serious production troubles, but said long repair times wouldn"t help the software giant in its first major foray into hardware.
John Kreis, 31, of Chicago bought an Xbox the day it came out. He said the $300 system stopped working almost immediately, but it took a month of aggravation with Xbox customer service before he got a replacement.
"The whole thing that was so frustrating (was) just the fact that still to this day I"m waiting for a call back just to explain to me what happened," he said.
The Associated Press spoke with about a dozen Xbox users who said the console never worked or soon froze up. Most called the customer service response poor.
"I"m taking my Christmas decorations down and (my son) hasn"t gotten to play with his Christmas toys yet," said Debbie Mason of Uniontown, Pa.
Analyst Rob Enderle of Giga Information Systems warned that customer service is more important than how many units actually break.
"If 200 people have a really bad experience and they"re vocal, then the impression is the product"s bad," he said.