Show HN: Tipnik – Instant customer feedback for local businesses

There is a widespread belief that customers don't give feedback today because they feel that businesses don't listen. It doesn't help that giving feedback today is not easy; there is no simple and consistent way of doing it, so the users don't bother. Businesses don't seem to listen because they usually don't focus on feedback (studies show that small businesses are not aware of the costs of aquiring customers vs retaining them) so it's a vicious cycle.

Our hypotesis (that we are going to test next) is that:

1. Providing an easy and consistent way to submit feedback across all local businesses will lower the barrier to the point where some users will start using it.

2. Providing an easy way for businesses to receive and respond to feedback via known tools (email) will improve the level of response. Also by being the intermediary, we can act on behalf of the consumer to help close the communication loop.

The real problem nobody is solving is that small businesses need feedback from customers to improve their services, but no one gives, and they also don't know how to ask.

Why would customer spend his time installing this and them commenting about some business, with almost certainty that the business will never read that comment?

How can the business get valuable feedback -- not just childish rants or cheers?

These questions remain open.

We use foursquare for local business information, filtered based on user's location.

Where's the data coming from and how are you considering a business as local or not?