The consumer tech world went crazy this week with the introduction of Apple's iPhone. Alas, AT&T dropped the ball on activation... as most cynics anticipated. It seems everyone including CNN reported on AT&T's problems. Thousands blogged on it including Declan McCullagh who complained:

I spent innumerable hours on hold over the weekend trying to get AT&T to actually activate the iPhone I bought on Friday evening. They finally did on Sunday, after 39 hours elapsed.

In AT&T iPhone activation, he adds:

Synchronoss, the New Jersey-based company that has a contract with AT&T to handle iPhone activations, says it is "extremely pleased" with the way the iPhone activations went.

"Extremely pleased"? Yeesh!

What would a market-driven vendor do?

Step 1: Understand when a problem exists.

Step 2: Acknowledge it.

Step 3: Speak directly to the solution.

What not to do?
Ignore the problem, claim success, and hope it will all go away.

It's not just on big events like this one. What is your company response to small customer issues? Ignore them? Or make it right... as soon as possible?