My Uber passenger rating is 4.57. I have no idea whether that's good or bad. I'm typically at pick-up points before the drivers are, I sometimes chat with drivers, I always wear my seatbelt, I sit in the back, and I don't make a mess or cause any problems. It's hard to know what I could be doing to get a better rating beyond just bribing drivers with cash tips at the end of the ride. I tend to rate every driver a 5 unless they clearly did something wrong, like insane driving (which happens rarely).
I'd be curious to know what the passenger cut-off ratings are, and what thus what kind of behavior is actually kicking people off the app.
Also, if there's some inherent racial or other protected class bias in the kinds of ratings that people get, then Uber could be in a world of trouble here.
In my experience what's considered a good or bad rating seems to depend on where in the world you are. I've noticed that people seem to average lower ratings in Poland for example than the UK.
This is strange. I'm always on time, on location and drivers usually appreciate the fact that I'm always exactly where I say I'll be when they arrive. The trips are completely uneventful. The only thing they could possibly not like about me is that I'm a boring passenger. My rating is 4.67. So I just assume that's a good rating!
Definitely regional. When I was in NYC I always got lower ratings when going from Manhattan to Queens, even while tipping well with cash. Bay Area? Went up to an almost perfect score (even going from San Francisco to Oakland frequently), people acted surprised when I tipped cash, etc.
I'm probably getting punished for dragging drivers out of Manhattan then -- which I do all the time when going to airports. Oh well. If it's proportional to the area then I'm probably still doing OK.
It's hard to know why they rated you in that way for getting 4.57
Maybe phoned someone and talked too loud, or they missclicked.. Who knows, but try to get an answer for that "low rating", maybe you could know who gave you that rating and try to fix it.
One thing I know riders may do inadvertently which aggravates drivers is slamming the door when you get out. Many are unaware of it, but it's quite annoying to the driver.
For me, I often rate drivers below 5 for the following common reasons:
1. Check engine light is on.
2. TPMS sensor light is on (major safety risk)
3. Poor routing choices (deviations outside the directed route)
These are professional drivers so I hold them to professional standards with respect to: maintaining their equipment, maintaining a safety standard, and knowing navigation.
Edit: Yes TPMS is super flaky. I own three cars equipped with TPMS and I've invested a great deal of time/money in maintaining them. But I keep them all in working condition. I can only assume that some of you poo-poo'ing TPMS are unaware of the Firestone Ford Debacle that caused close to 300 deaths [1]. Under inflated tires are no-joke. Suggesting that it's ok to defeat a critical safety system is laughable. Also I live in CA so it's not a snow-tire issue.
If TPMS is tire pressure, then you are being unfair. There are cars like Toyota and Audi that have sensors that don't work well and even frequent service can't keep them off (to the point where some will not-quite-suggest disabling them).
So if you are going to downgrade for that, at least have a look at the tires directly and see if one is obviously lower than the others.
TPMS reset is usually holding a button and typically in your driver's manual for the vehicle. Found this out myself when my tires got replaced and they couldn't reset my TPMS sensors.
I have a tool to reset them myself, I think it was free from Tire Rack when I bought the tires. It's like a keyfob and pretty simple to use, you just hold down a button.
I always swap my own tires in the summer/winter because it takes me less time to do it than to drive to the shop. TPMS, but it can be such a pain.
My previous car, 2010 VW I could switch from summer to winter wheels/tires and drive away. TPMS would figure it out just fine. Now I have a Subaru and am debating buying a $100 tool to reset them. It won't take long to pay for itself, but as it is now, the light is still on.
Worse, my Ram has positional sensors and I haven't seen any "cheap" tools. It happens to be the same set of wheels, but I rotated them and it expects different pressure in the front vs rear. The light is on and it yells at every start because the rear tires are underinflated. How hard can it be for a car to learn which tire is on which corner of the vehicle?
In California, summer tires get the best traction and all-seasons are generally worse (many people mistakenly believe that all-seasons perform better than summer in the rain, I suppose because winter is the rainy season here).
I guess it depends on what part of California you're talking about but all-seasons will generally outperform equivalent grade summer tires in the rain if temperatures start falling below 50-55° or so. A summer tire's grip falls off precipitously [1] when temperatures reach 40-45° but the loss of grip in that "NorCal winter" kind of weather can reduce their performance below that of all seasons. Just because they haven't lost a dangerous amount of grip doesn't mean they haven't fallen behind the grip available to a tire with a more temperature insensitive compound.
Agreed, I should have specified that all-seasons are the safe option in some parts of California. My frame of reference is the warm climates of Silicon Valley and SoCal. Summer tires could even lose traction in one of the colder nights in a San Jose winter.
in theory, the difference between summers and all-seasons is the rubber compound used. all things being equal, the summer compound will perform better when it's hot outside. in reality, most people in the US just don't care and run all-seasons year round. people tend to only buy summer tires for performance-oriented vehicles, so the tires offered with summer compound tend to be aggressive tires with less tread. if you pick a summer tire at random, it may well be less capable than an all-season tire in the rain. the superior compound can't grip if it can't evacuate enough water from the contact patch.
Tire pressure sensors are super flaky. Mine come on randomly all the time, and after the first few dozen times I stopped to put a real gauge on them and saw that all four were right at the rated pressure, I've gotten to the point where I just ignore it and punch the button on the dash to hide the warning. It's the kind of false negative feedback that is especially unhelpful.
It doesn't help that it is completely opaque what the thresholds are for when the warning light goes off; I also don't know whether one is supposed to recalibrate anything if you change the type of tire that you are running - for instance, I run snow tires during the winter that have a different PSI rating than my all-seasons the rest of the year...
You car manufacturer should be setting the psi, rather than the tire manufacturer. There are indeed manufacturers who recommend higher pressure on winter tires for that car model, but it's still the model and not the tire that drives it. (Tires have a max inflation pressure, but the recommended pressure comes off the door jamb of your car.)
TPMS is also relatively easy to reset (just read the manual) it does not require professional service. You usually do need to do it seasonally due to fluctuations in outside temp. Drivers should really be aware of it.
Mechanical failure is a fart in a hurricane compared to human factors when it comes to safety. I'm not gonna ding anyone for being too cheap to put TPMS sensors in their snow tire rims. I'm not gonna ding anyone for a CEL either. 95% of the time it's basically just complaining that an emissions system is not in an optimal state. In a work vehicle setting you do not fix this when it happens. You plan a time in the future to take the vehicle down for maintenance, just like patching a prod system.
In a non-work vehicle, I imagine most people do the same. My wife's car has the MIL/CEL lit for the last 6 weeks for a failed knock sensor. I ordered the part and will probably change it this weekend, but we're not parking it and it's not a safety or even an emissions concern.
The CEL being on isn't enough for me to ding a driver but I've also never received an Uber ride where the CEL was on but the car was in otherwise top condition. There is definitely enough of a correlation between a CEL being on and the car having a blown suspension (bushings, struts, CV joints), some engine belt or accessory with a bearing about to fail, or brake pads so worn it's basically riding on nothing but the wear indicators (squealers). Sometimes I even get lucky and get all three.
Maybe it's reasonable to report the CEL in that situation since it's something most riders will notice and can easily be verified by Uber with a photo unlike the condition of the mechanical bits themselves.
It really isn't. (very) low tire pressure is a major safety risk. The TPMS sensors I've had all seem to go off at minor deviations (few psi) from the tire pressure; deviations that aren't a safety risk.
A useful reminder that the winter is coming, but hardly a major safety risk.
Close to 300 people died [1] in the 90s due to improperly inflated tires. Sorry, but I don't screw around with safety factors like this when I'm being hurled down freeway interchanges at 70 mph.
> The TPMS sensors I've had all seem to go off at minor deviations
Ah sorry, that's the global statistic, not the US statistic.
Still, both statistics illustrate the point - 300 deaths a few decades ago involving faulty tires that may have been exacerbated by manufacturer-recommended underinflation have basically 0 bearing on the marginal risk of driving with a TPMS warning light illuminated.
Uh no, according to your own source they died because of tread separation caused by a number of factors, one of which may have been underinflation. But in this example the 'underinflated' value was manufacturer recommended, so a TPMS wouldn't have helped anyways.
TPMS modules are insanely flaky. That light will pop for reasons ranging from synchronization issues to using a spare without a module (not the donut!)..none of which impact safety at all.
Same with "check engine." My last car had the check engine light on from years 3 to 15, when I sold it. The reason was a faulty sensor but the actual mechanics were sound and not worth fixing.
I'm amused that you think you're holding drivers to professional standards. Professionals know when to ignore the dummy lights intended for the masses...
...which is not to say you should change anything, because Uber drivers ARE the masses, so it makes little sense to treat them like professionals!
> My last car had the check engine light on from years 3 to 15, when I sold it. The reason was a faulty sensor but the actual mechanics were sound
Some Nissan models used to have a fun version of this where the check engine light came on to notify you about a problem with... the check engine light. It was a bug, obviously, but not a sensor wrongly detecting a fault. Rather, the car's only way of saying "if something goes wrong the check engine light might not activate" was to activate the check engine light.
Whatever the underlying issue, I assume software, replacing sensors didn't work and resetting the light would only last for a few hundred miles. It was effectively impossible to keep the light working, so the mechanic-recommended fix was to just disable it.
Not really. I don't have the ability to choose which car I ride in with Uberpool. I have limited ability to choose what car I ride in when I carpool the normal way via Bay Area casual carpool stops (I can refuse to get in the next car in line, and that's about it). And, in either of those scenarios, the most important factor (the driver) is essentially random as well.
When the light is on, you have no assurance that the tires are properly inflated. Period. If the TPMS light is off, you can be well-assured that tires are inflated properly.
Yes, the system is finicky (by design). Yes the system can be costly to maintain (I do it myself it's it expensive and time-consuming). These are the responsibilities one must take on if they wish to be transporting the public.
>When the light is on, you have no assurance that the tires are properly inflated
I mean, you could always, you know, check. With a tire pressure gauge. Like on every car ever that didn't have this TP thingy. Honestly, you don't even need to do that - if the tire is low enough to be a safety risk, it will be visibly flat.
Would you down-rate an Uber just for not having this sensor at all?
It isn’t like these doors tensions are standardized. How much pressure to apply to the trunk door of this car you’ve never ridden in before? No idea, it might even be the auto closing kind. Thankfully, most Ubers are priuses, but not always.
That's why you should push doors/trunks/hatches closed and not throw/shove/fling them. I don't mean "push", as in close it like your closing the front door after sneaking home after curfew in high school. I mean it more like keep your hand on the door and slowly accelerate until you've given it enough momentum.
You aren’t pushing so much as pulling. It is much more difficult to control from the inside. Anyways, I just don’t ride in enough cars to get used to the different tensions (maybe if I took Uber more). Also, it always seems to be the American sedans that have the most problems, which we don’t have too many of on the west coast.
I can understand that. Honestly, my experience with modern midsize sedans (Altima in particular, Accord, Camry, Sonata, etc) is that the manufacturers view the rear doors as throwaway areas for "engineering" weight out of the car. The rear doors on these cars honestly weigh about half what the fronts weigh and they fly open and close as if made of paper maché.
I'd encourage you not to rate low over the TPMS sensor light - it's far from a guarantee of actually low tire pressure.
On many cars, TPMS sensor problems cause the light to blink at startup, then stay on steadily just like you had a low tire. That includes "the tire doesn't have a sensor", which can save about $200 on each valve stem. Given how quickly an Uber driver can rack up mileage, I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are just saving money on tires by getting sensor-less ones.
(Admittedly you can't tell if they're checking the pressure manually; I would think so to save on tire lifespan, but it's obviously not guaranteed. Of course, not seeing the light isn't a guarantee either.)
Yep, that. I guess TPMS for the winter rims would be a one-time cost that should outlast the tires, but it's still pretty common to not get it. An extra ~$800 up front, last time I had a tire replaced the sensor ended up damaged anyway, and if your winter tire pressure is different it'll just complain uselessly anyway.
Plus, if you're already spending >$1000 for winter tires/wheels, it's hard to justify TPMS on top of that.
And if you're paying that much for the added safety/performance, you're not the kind of person who needs TPMS to nag them into inflating to the proper pressure.
If you're spending >$1000 on tires, how is a $80 set of TPMS hard to justify?
Presumably you're buying snow tires for safety reasons. Proper tire pressure is important for traction, thus safety. And winter is the time when tire pressure fluctuates the most.
> And winter is the time when tire pressure fluctuates the most
genuinely curious, why? I thought tire pressure fluctuations were linearly related to air temperature fluctuations. does the temperature vary more in the winter than in the summer?
At least in some of the US, quite a bit more. Winter might be swings of >50F, especially night to day, while summer variation is likely to be <40F. I'm not what all weather patterns factor into that, but a major part is that winter air is dryer, and water vapor does a lot to 'buffer' brief temperature changes.
That said, I mostly end up checking my tires more in the winter because I care more; if a tire is only a few pounds low I'd still prefer to handle it before I have to go drive on snow during a cold snap.
Sure, but if you’re the kind of person who buys winter tires (which IME is pretty rare in the widwest USA), you probably know that and check your pressure every couple weeks. And it probably only fluctuates a couple PSI which is well within safe bounds.
Sensors are frequently and unavoidably damaged during unmounting. Many shops just replace the sensors as a matter of course when replacing the tire, since there is no way to test the sensor until the new tire is mounted and inflated.
Hell, even my dealership "only" charges $80 per wheel. Though we quickly learned the local tire shop does them for $40 a pop with a much quicker service. I generally just let the dealer service our car since there's not many mechanics in the area qualified to service hybrids anyway, but hell if I'm letting them rip us off on anything related to the tires again (even though their prices for Toyota factory tires are quite fair, I'm not paying an extra $40 a tire for the sensors when we buy a new set).
These TPMS sensors do add a significant price increase on the tires, which most people I know about choose to avoid at the expense of this "lights on".
We do have to swap our tires for winter tires up north, so I'm not getting tires with the sensors.
I'd suggest adding #4. Not using turn signals. This makes things slightly less safe for everyone else on the road (including peds + bikers) and it costs the driver nothing to properly signal.
I googled "Firestone Ford" before reading to the end of the sentence and seeing your link, and amazingly, the first result is a woman named "Martha Firestone Ford" [1], whose name comes from the same business relationship that produced the debacle.
Mine is 4.77, though I don't use uber that much. I'm also pretty sure they display a recent average, with old (>1 year?) rides not counting.
I also feel compelled to give drivers 5 stars because people IMO tend to look down at anything less than the best. I realize it's not the most accurate comparison, but would you buy from an ebay/amazon reseller who had a 80% approval rating?
There’s no way to know what the reasons are for the reviews either way. Sometimes the app messes up the location it sends drivers to, is the driver faulting me and giving me a lower rating? Does the driver not like the conversation? I think for an effective feedback loop you need to provide a reason. As others have mentioned, I too only give drivers 5 stars.
Here’s the thing: if someone doesn’t want to chat should that affect their access to a paid service?
With Uber you’re paying for a professional driver (they’re being paid, so they’re a pro by definition) to take you from A to B. There shouldn’t be any obligation to engage in anything but pleasantries.
I think I'm social enough, but who knows. I always respond with conversation when they're interested.
But this is their job, and I'm paying for the service with my money. It's not the passenger's responsibility or obligation to socialize with the driver. The passenger's responsibility is to be there on time, not mess up the car, and pay.
I took an Uber a few weeks ago (I don't often) and right when I got in the driver asked me I was new to Uber and if this was my second/third trip. I said no, I had taken it a good amount of times, just not often. He seemed surprised and said I had a 5 star rating, which he thought was rare for riders. At that point I didn't know I could see my own rating in the app but I looked and I do have a 5 star rating. This was only what one driver said in one city but I guess it could be rarer?
I've got a 5 star rating as well. I pretty much only take it from to and from the airport, I'm always on time at the spot I'm supposed to be and always tip. I just thought this was normal.
I've heard that Uber drivers will sometimes give low ratings to people who take short trips. A ride-share form has someone who seems to have high-ish reputation backing that up [1].
I might be suffering from the opposite problem then. I live in NYC and walk/bike most places; I only rarely even take the subway. When I'm taking rideshare it's almost always to/from airports (here and elsewhere). I definitely don't use it for short trips. And given how often taxi drivers don't want to take you to airports, I can imagine Uber drivers might not like that either? It can certainly take them far out of their way.
This happened to me. I had a 5 star rating until I started using Uber for work travel to/from a busy airport that I live close to. A driver could easily spend 20+ minutes getting to me before they could spend the 15 minutes driving me to my destination for $10. This tanked my rating down to around 4 stars for a while. I was relatively new to Uber so it was easy to check my rating after a ride and do the math to see when I was getting a 1 star review averaged into my rating.
I started tipping the drivers cash which helped, but then I realized it was easier to just use a taxi at the airport. It would only cost a few dollars more, and I wouldn't have to wait for the driver to get through 20 minutes of airport traffic to pick me up. I also didn't have to worry about my rating if I pissed off the driver (especially for short airport fares the drivers seem to like telling me that their credit card machine was broken. Argue with them a bit and the machine magically starts working).
How is that an effective repercussion without them also telling you that they're giving you a lower rating for that reason? Do they expect you to somehow intuit over time based on meticulously checking your score after each ride and doing the math?
Sneaky but you can casually linger in the car for an extra second; most drivers rate you right as you're getting out, with a phone that's usually mounted within eyeshot of passenger seats.
The ones who will give you 5 stars usually do it right away in front of you; if they seem weirdly secretive about it, you're probably not getting 5 stars.
I had a roughly 5.0 rating over a hundred or so rides in the Midwest US, but mine dropped to around 4 after taking 30-40 Ubers in India. It was a different experience there, and I always wondered if rating scales are different culturally (and we did have some GPS/language barrier difficulty, as well as some drivers who refused to be paid with Uber and made us give them cash that I’m sure affected it), but the ratings still stay with you global.
That could be part of it. I do a fair bit of international travel, and some of it could either be cultural ratings differences or just frustration over communication difficulties.
We have the same experience, our rating while in Asia was around solid 4.6 while after 3 months in Europe went up to 4.85. Our guess is that in EU, people tend to either give 5 stars or no rating, while in Asia if we had a bit worse ride, we and people around us had no hesistation of leaving 3 or 4 star review.
Race/ethnic/cultural tendencies on 5-star an numeric eating scales have been studied quite a bit, and, yes, Europeans tend to give higher ratings for acceptable service (tending to give maximum ratings for “meets expectations”) while Asians tend to give lower ratings (tending toward middle-of-scale ratings for “meets expectations”).
I wonder how much that tendency is the result of Europeans having more exposure to "management by the numbers" kind of rating/review systems. Nearly everyone has held or known someone close to them with a job where a mostly meaningless customer review/rating/survey grade had an enormously disproportionate impact on their perceived job performance. The only times I'll ever rate something that isn't exceptionally good or exceptionally bad is when it is obviously tied to that person's performance metrics and they met expectations.
I would report that. All of the UberX rides that I had in Delihi were taxis who didn't have the meter on. I've had a few that were just not great, butyou shouldn't be having that big of an issue with Uber there. English is an offical language in India.
This was in Chennai mostly, so little different language situation. I don’t mean to come off too harsh on it, as having Uber in India was extremely useful for me getting around. Some of the rides were around 1-2 USD so wasn’t worth the hassle.
There are 16 official languages in India. The vast majority of cab drivers you encounter will only know one of them. In the South English is more likely to be spoken, in the North, it is far less likely.
I can vouch for there being a protected class bias. In my experience (Boston), using Uber while on crutches will cause your rating to fall. Even if you take full-service Uber’s (not Pool), and generally have someone to help you in and out and managing your crutches, drivers simply tend to rate you lower. Possibly because they have to wait longer, or because I need to lean on the car getting in and out, or because they need to keep the crutches in their car somehow.
I was on crutches with a broken ankle a few years ago and definitely took more Ubers during that period (including shorter rides). This could definitely be part of it.
I don't think there's much you can do, or if there is it is none of these things. Mine was ~4.5 for forever. I was always on time, careful entering/exiting the vehicle, very polite, etc. and even regularly gave cash tips before the app offered the option.
A few years ago I started dating a girl who had nearly a 5 star rating. She eventually moved in with me and since then nearly all my trips are together. We are often late arriving to the meeting point, she has no hesitation to ask the driver to change the air temperature, adjust the music station or volume, open or close windows, always takes water when available, and asks to be dropped off at a given point regardless of traffic lights or inconvenient turns for the driver. Since this started, my rating has steadily climbed and is now around 4.8.
There is also the possibility that asking people to do small things for you will increase their positive view of you. I remember reading about psychologist having uncovered such an effect but I forget the name of it.
If I had to bet, I would say both factors (and others we aren't considered) are at play.
This is known as the Ben Franklin Effect [0] and is pretty interesting to read up on. It wouldn't at all surprise me if this plays into passenger ratings, even though it seems counter-intuitive.
OK, I think it's another effect than "increasing their positive view of you". It is something I have noted and struggled with because it is counter intuitive to me.
I always try to be very autonomous and ask the minimum favors/services from people, trying not to bother them. This has caused me trouble several times, from people that were supposed to help me. When I was doing track and field two decades ago I had a sports sponsorship cancelled essentially because I didn't ask any extra gear.
When you ask a favor and the person fulfills it, they get to be useful and it gives them purpose. I have found that this varies from people to people.
The Uber driver will most likely feel good if you actually need his help as a human being rather than just be a mindless vehicle operator.
Congratulations on having a pretty girlfriend. Don't underestimate the power of having a pretty girl talk to you, even if it's just to ask to change the radio station.
It goes both ways. I remember a conversation I had with a very nice Uber driver, a Muslim woman. She made a point of picking up female riders with low ratings, because she believed male Uber drivers would downrate them if they thought the women unattractive, or if they rejected advances.
Have you tried asking? I asked a few drivers, at the end of a ride and after I’d rated them, what I could do better. Two complained about my taking work calls in the car. I started requesting permission, at the beginning of the ride, to take a phone call. (It’s their car, after all.) Never been refused. Rating jumped from ~4.4 to ~4.9.
I’ll also note that some of the sweetest people I know have terrible ratings for constantly being late, at the wrong pick-up spot or other little reasons. It’s mostly a rating around if you’re observant and treat the driver like a human being more than if you’re a good person.
(Note: I’m a guy. I don’t think gender is as powerful as other comments assume.)
>Two complained about my taking work calls in the car. I started requesting permission, at the beginning of the ride, to take a phone call.(It’s their car, after all.)
Seriously? It's their car that you've contracted to take you from Point A to Point B. It would never occur to me to ask permission before making (or taking) a phone call.
I dunno, if I were a driver I'd probably be pretty annoyed by hearing one end of a loud conversation for an entire long ride.
Generally in the rides I'm in the driver is still listening to whatever music they like, which obviously they can't do if the passenger is trying to have a phone conversation.
I take Uber rarely but, of course, the system is setup so that the driver can rate me however they like for whatever reason. As can I them. And it might even be reasonable for them to give me a lower score for a long "loud" conversation or for discussing matters that probably shouldn't be discussed in public which make them uncomfortable.
OTOH, while they can do whatever they want, the expectation seems to be that both driver and rider give top scores barring one or the other doing something that clearly deviates from the norms of taxi driver or passenger behavior.
In any case, I'm pretty confident that I'm normally polite and if someone gives me a lower score now and then on one of these services, I really don't care.
If you have a low rating, Uber offers tips to improve it such as not slamming doors, being ready for pickup, etc. I think it’s also easily found in the Help section of the app.
> It's their car that you've contracted to take you from Point A to Point B. It would never occur to me to ask permission before making (or taking) a phone call.
It wouldn’t have to me, either. But I was curious and so asked, and in between the useless answers I got that repeating point of feedback.
Note that I didn’t stop taking calls. But I did think “how would I behave if I were in a friend’s car?” I figured I’d at least give a heads up that a call was coming in. So I tried that one thing and it worked.
> An Uber driver is not my friend. They’re someone I’m paying to drive me.
This is a fair view. It’s also fair to treat a driver as a new acquaintance. And it makes sense that the drivers who have a choice (i.e. are higher rated) will choose riders who treat them like that.
My point isn’t everyone has to do these things. Just that if you care about your rating, asking for feedback and offering common courtesies cab go a long way. (I’ve also found it improves my disposition, but that’s a separate matter.)
Perfectly fair. It sounds as if you might have liked the early days of Lyft. Personally I never used them then because the whole fist bump, faux friend, thing was totally offputting.
On the rare occasions I use Uber or Lyft today, I’m polite and friendly/chatty enough depending on the circumstances but someone’s doing a job for me and I don’t owe them anything beyond basic politeness.
Dunno. It's a per peeve of mine when people take a non-speakerphone call in a common space. Trains, cars, meals, or living rooms.
It monopolizes the noise in the area and puts everyone else in some sort of awkward space where they have to eavesdrop and pretend they aren't. Sometimes I think about obviously watching a train commuter have a long and loud phone conversation, but I don't because it would be rude and aggressive.
I guess hired cars are a little different in most respects but people can still feel bad or awkward for listening in on something they aren't part of. Especially if the conversation is loud, personal, or confidential.
It's much better if the phone call is urgent, short, or important. But even then it's polite to be conciliatory as the phone call is made or picked up.
Hired car is definitely different. You’ve rented that space, it is not public. I don’t see anything wrong with having a phone call while being driven around.
I don't take calls during rides, I'm almost never late for the pickup (and have never gone past the grace period), and I'm very precise at setting the pickup pin exactly. It's not any of these issues.
And no, I've never considered asking "how I can do better". They're providing the service, not me, and I'm paying them.
>Two complained about my taking work calls in the car. I started requesting permission, at the beginning of the ride, to take a phone call.(It’s their car, after all.)
Customers are expensive to acquire, and Uber is not going to throw them away for no good reason. Their incentive is to ban customers only when their behavior is so bad that they are at risk of losing drivers
They could start banning people they don't like for political reasons, same as payment processors. If people from the other side of the aisle are in power, they could ask Uber to ban illegal aliens.
It's crazy that you won't be able to take public transportation like Uber because of your political beliefs or because of who you are.
For Uber the drivers are also their customers. So, agree that protecting the drivers from hostile/bad riders is important also. Uber is just like a marketplace in many ways.
I'm sitting at 4.97 in LA - but I ride a lot. And my ratings scale for drivers is similar - 5 star for normal, compliments for things above that, <4 stars for "you did something obviously wrong, WTF" level service.
As for racial / protected class bias in ratings - I'm not sure what Uber would hit that something like Tinder wouldn't, since all the ratings are from other "users".
Posting racially-discriminating for-rent ads gets both the landlord and the newspaper in trouble. "We're just a platform" doesn't work as an excuse.
It's also not hard to detect statistically - with enough data you can see that a given driver is giving worse ratings to protected class members compared to similar drivers at the same time and place.
Riders can self-select into a protected class, maybe?
This will of course lead to a situation where some hooligans opt into a protected class just to mess with the system. Even still, on large number of rides it will even out.
But everyone is a member of a protected class. Some people might not be members of historically disadvantaged protected classes, but the relevant laws don't discriminate in that way. ('Men' is a protected class. 'Women' is a protected class. And 'Other' is a protected class, too.)
There's no such thing as protected classes in dating though, so I don't think it's a useful parallel. You're allowed to not date, say, people of other races if that's how your tastes run, but you're not allowed to discriminate against providing business services to people by race.
Is showing your profile to other people a "business service"? Because IIRC Tinder does some ML to show you people they predict you'll like (based on what other people with preferences similar to you liked) - and that would probably result in showing certain profiles to others less often.
Mine used to be a 4.78. Not sure what caused it to be like that. I tend to either chat with the driver, or I'll stay silent. I'll never take the water or candy. I feel like I'm owed something to them if I do.
My rating did go up after going to India. (Probably because of the numerous amounts of rides I took there)
I always sit in the front, it never occurred to me that this might be annoying for the driver. Is it?
When I've driven people around, even people I've barely met (say friends-of-friends), I've always preferred that they sit in the front. I was never a pro driver though.
I don't know if it's annoying for the driver but the only time I would even consider thinking of sitting in the front seat would be if I was in a group and we needed to use that seat to fit everyone.
Driving around even casual acquaintances (e.g. friends-of-friends) is a totally different dynamic where it would seem a bit odd for them to sit in the back seat as if you were their chauffeur even if you sort of are.
I prefer to sit on the front seat because it always has a working 3-point seatbelt. On the back, seatbelts are often the older 2-point seatbelts, tucked between the backrest and the seat so you can't reach it, or both.
I have a 4.20 and it's bizarre. I've never made an Uber wait for me, I'm always outside. I greet them. I'm clean. My routes are always penciled in exactly. I don't see how I'm not the model passenger.
Maybe it's just because I'm a gringo in Mexico? Maybe I should use a little more small talk charm? Or offer them gum? Improve my accent? Bring them a bottle of S.Pellegrino, nicely chilled? It's a stupid system.
Edit: A sibling comment inspired me to ask my girlfriend for her rating. It's a 4.89. Yet she always stays inside until the Uber driver arrives to pick her up, often honking outside for her while she finally starts turning off lights and shutting the house down.
Based on what you and some other people are saying, it does seem bizarre, like maybe some kind of random favoritism is going on.
I also am white and live in Mexico (Playas de Tijuana). My rating is 4.81. I have been going on the assumption that I am kind of ugly looking, although its hard for me to be objective about it.
I do always give tips though. They usually have three choices, like 10, 15, or 20 pesos, and I always pick the highest option. Sometimes for a longer trip I will put like 38 pesos tip. Maybe there is some way for drivers to track tips and somehow that can affect a rating?
I always say thanks for the ride when I get in and out.
My Spanish is very limited and I rarely attempt to say anything in Spanish except for buena noche or something like that. In this area around 33-40% of the drivers speak English.
> It's hard to know what I could be doing to get a better rating beyond just bribing drivers with cash tips at the end of the ride.
This is almost all that matters now. Any drivers forum will be full of drivers basically talking about how they give lower ratings if you don't tip cash. A few are even full-on blatant about it in person if you bring it up.
After time I think we'll see things coalesce around only riders who pay cash tips get 5 star ratings.
The rider can also leave a bad rating for the driver in this case, though, right?
Does Uber deactivate drivers that fall below a certain rating? Even if they don't, I presume lower ratings would hurt a driver more than they would a passenger.
So if a driver is trying to pull this it wouldn't end out great for either party, I would presume?
Ratings by drivers are very often based on irrelevant criteria like how likeable you seem, or whether they interpret your preference for silence as an insult.
This is me as a rider:
a) Always at pickup on time (or I message "be right there" if I'm a minute away)
b) I enter and say "Hi, how's it going?" and acknowledge.
c) I then put in my headphones for audible. I say nothing else the rest of the trip.
d) I get out where it's most convenient for them, and I say "Thank you", and gently shut the door.
Yep, apparently they don't care - my rating hangs out in low 4.7s.
However, Uber Black always boosts my ratings, because the drivers are more mature and rate based on what actually matters.
This is a repeating pattern we need to address on a meta-level to avoid an outcome that I think none of us think is optimal.
- private company innovates a service that people use all the time
- private company is so successful it displaces other, existing, methods of doing the same
- private company becomes defacto monopoly in many cases
- private company withdraws service from problem users
- those users are left with no options
In the case of Uber, it is kind of obvious, as there are areas where they have displaced (put out if business) numerous private cab and car service companies.
Each step is a reasonable progression through our system. I don’t think anyone should be blamed for each step.
[edit] warning: you might find this comment irrelevant, annoying or even false
You forgot the juiciest parts:
- private company plays on legal gray areas on purpose
- private company invest aggressively to expand faster than law can react in order to grab said monopoly
This is basically capital cancer, they had a real value but dismissed everything a company is to a society:
- stable for employees
- stable for users
- stable for society
Any company can play rough when let loose with massive funds, but when reality occurs, just like anybody else, they'll have to round their corners and .. surprise.. they stop being interested and competitive.
This is a bad comment. The OP had a valuable point that applies to companies inside and outside of this "gray area[]". You're just making a tired and repetitive dig at Uber itself. It may be that Uber's gig economy model has important downsides of its own, but the salient problem is of private control of what's become public infrastructure, and that has nothing to do with Uber being cancer or something.
Did Uber not do exactly what op said? Aggressively grow to capture markets before the legal system could react? How is that a bad comment? I mean, the original article is about Uber. How is op in the wrong by describing exactly the business model they adopted?
The OP isn't wrong: the problem is that his point is irrelevant. The real question, to which nobody has an answer, is this: what do we do as a society when a small number of private companies corner the market for an essential part of modern life and then institute arbitrary criteria for refusing service to people? How this situation came about doesn't matter. Uber making all drivers full employees would not change the dynamic one bit.
Complaining about Uber's employment model instead of discussing this really important control question just annoys me. It deflects a potentially interesting conversation into grievance-airing about gig jobs.
It's somewhat relevant because it was plain as a day through continued behaviour that Uber is a sociopathic company. So while not all companies would follow the mechanic in question, and different companies may follow it at different pace, it was always obvious that Uber will screw riders over as soon as possible.
On the contrary, we need to really understand how we got here first, in order to be able to recognize patterns of the problem and determine how to avoid it in the future.
As the saying goes, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
It’s irrelevant that a company is able to skirt regulation? Would Uber be in the position to “institute arbitrary criteria” if they had to compete in an environment with proper governance being in place?
The crux of your argument is we shouldn’t care about how we get there but what happens next or essentially, how do we react.
If you want to solve a problem, identify and fix the root cause instead of reactively applying some patch to cover the bleeding.
Getting “annoyed” at someone discussing the root cause is misguided.
Fair point. I was a bit easy to comment. But there's a public side to my point. Services can be wiped with such business models which is detrimental to society. Amazon pushed a lot of people aside, now their prices are all but guaranteed to be fair.
No, they weren't. Taxi companies operated legally. Uber routinely broke the law.
Also it still perplexes me that Uber managed to convince so many people with their bullshit PR campaign about the small upstart facing the Taxi Mafia - when from the beginning it was a heavily-funded company, later turned multinational corporation, fighting small local providers with underhand tactics.
Taxi companies provided a horrible customer experience, routinely discriminated, and often defrauded their customers. I know because I suffered from it long before Uber ever existed.
I'm not trying to excuse Uber but taxi companies in some places also routinely broke the law by refusing to travel to certain areas, pick up some minority passengers, or accept credit cards. In theory they were accountable to local taxi commissions but in practice that was totally ineffective in forcing drivers to obey the law.
And, in addition, in many places taxi companies became a cartel: remember the TLC medallion madness where some crooks were reaping the cream of the crop.
It sounds like you've never been stranded late at night waiting hours for a cab that was "5 minutes away." I don't participate in the bar scene anymore. I don't benefit from the increased user experience of knowing exactly where your cab is, and if they cancel. Legal or not, I sure am glad those jackasses got their comeuppance.
It still perplexes me that people believe that Uber needed to convince anyone about Taxi mafia. The taxis in US are amazingly backwards -- for example, there were no online tracking, no pre-defined fares, and no online ordering.
I remember having to use "car services" just because the taxis were so unpleasant.
It actually wasn't Uber + Lyft (or their class better UXs) that convinced me. It was a taxi cab driver turned Uber + Lyft driver who looked at me incredulously when I asked him if Uber/Lyft was worth it.
"You bet ya!", he said, "I'm on vacation!" he said. He went on to talk about how the taxi cab industry was a dirty industry and uber/lyft reformed it.
Meanwhile one of my journalist friends declaims the "tyranny" of Uber/Lyft. It's not hyperbole its simply inaccurate.
> No, they weren't. Taxi companies operated legally. Uber routinely broke the law.
No, they didn't. At least, not in most US cities - I don't know how the laws work abroad. All a taxi medallion does is allow you to accept rides from people that hail you from the street. That's it. Limo companies and vans that you scheduled beforehand did not need medallions. There's functionally not much different from the service Uber provides and existing charter services, except for the fact that Uber used technology to make scheduling rides much faster.
The "Taxi Mafia" very much existed, though calling it a cartel is probably more accurate. Governments deliberately constrained the supply of taxis through medallions. Naturally, this resulted in inflated prices and poor service due to lack of competition. There's a reason why many people have little sympathy for the taxi industry's struggles to compete with ride sharing: taxis sucked.
Taxi had a lot of substandard features. But their employees weren't random guys without insurance nor training. They also had some semblance of career. I don't know all, but many Uber drivers didn't get their investment back yet and changing prices and rules make it a risky bet.
Even in the USA, that wasn’t true, let alone outside of the states. Taxi drivers don’t make back their investment (car/medallion rental) often, much more than an Uber driver who can use their own car and need no medallion at all. And...career as a taxi driver? There is a reason driving a cab is on the low wrung of new immigrant jobs, you can barely survive on it.
I guess they did have insurance (again, at least in the states), but so do Uber drivers.
Maybe 30 years ago that was true? Definitely not today, well, for some definition of raise a family I guess. If you are doing it to support your family back in Nigeria, it could work out.
I took a cab from the las vegas airport to my hotel recently as I was in a hurry and didn't know where the uber pick up area was. When we got to the hotel, suprise suprise, the credit card machine was broken and it took a 15 minute call for the driver to get things sorted and charge the card manually via calling his dispatcher.
I agree Uber's not a monopoly, but I also think crappy taxi companies are a local problem.
I don't use Uber or taxis often, but have used both several times over the years. There's never been a practical difference for me. If anything, Uber is less convenient because I need to sign up and install an app. Maybe one was a little cheaper, but not so much that I noticed.
> This is basically capital cancer, they had a real value but dismissed everything a company is to a society:
> - stable for employees
> - stable for users
> - stable for society
No. Stability comes at the expense of dynamism. Innovation disrupts stability, and society is more often than not better off for it. You pay a needless tax whenever you buy a CD or flash drive which gets handed off to record companies in the presumption that you will pirate music. Politicians decided that the music industry needed more stability, and passed laws to make consumers fork over tax money to subsidize them.
There was a push to make ride-share companies wait at least 30 minutes before pairing riders up with a car. Not to guarantee any sort of safety or to fight congestion. It was literally just degrading service in order to make taxi companies more competitive with Uber, Lyft, etc.
Trying to achieve stability frequently hurts users and degrades quality of service.
This has been a particular problem for the handicapped community as I understand it, as the service speed for handicapped vehicles has been much worse.
Not just that, but when I was on crutches my rating dramatically dropped. I almost always had a friend with me to help out with storing the crutches and getting in and out of the car, but regardless my rating fell at least a tenth. Drivers probably didn’t like how I needed to grab onto their car to enter and exit, or maybe that the crutches were in their car, or that the whole process took a bit longer.
Taxis already discriminated against users they perceived to be problems. In New York, if you were a minority or headed somewhere outside Manhattan on the airports, good luck finding a cab.
I don’t believe that Uber and Lyft have made the problem significantly worse than it already was.
There is a big difference between individual taxi drivers refusing to take a specific fare at a specific moment in time and a company that controls a large percentage of ground transportation denying someone access to it forever.
It's like the difference between an injury and a chronic disease.
No, I think they should be fired and not allowed to work in public transportation for some time, and only then after some rehab/training. People can change, after all. But this is a different issue with different sorts of solutions.
It is really more like having one cashier at a grocery store refuse to ring you up as opposed to the grocery store chain not allowing you inside because the cashiers decided you weren't delightful enough, even if that was because your child was loud a few times.
When it is the cashier, you have a bit of recourse, after all. When it is the chain, you have very little recourse and not only that, but now you have to figure out where else to shop. It might not be so bad in a town with many grocery stores, but it'll be mighty inconvenient if you have to drive to the next town to shop.
I'm not arguing against the idea that low-star riders make drivers' experiences worse and that's why they have low ratings. I'm arguing against the idea that a "social metric", which can be changed and expanded (to include, hypothetically, your credit score), should be used to deny access to services, without strong guarantees about the sources and other aspects of that social metric.
The Orwellian aspect is when companies start sharing their scores, and when those scores start having clearly highly subjective influences.
After watching some videos of what Uber drivers have to put up with, as well as having a few friends that work in retail, some kind of "social metric" may not be the worst thing.
As a society, we put up with a lot of terrible behavior and people get away with it because they don't care about making a scene or situation that is uncomfortable for everyone else. We pay higher prices to deal with these people's behavior: constantly complaining until they get free stuff, abusing return policies, review blackmail, vandalizing state/national parks, cutting lines, etc.
You're right though that we need very strong guarantees around the sources and accuracy of such a metric.
I had a very similar reaction 25ish years ago when I found out as a teen credit agencies exist and were somehow not illegal (but employment blacklists are).
Don't worry - I was told they are optional, and you only need them for major things like if you getting a new car or house financed. Anyone worried about these things were mocked with the slippery slope "fallacy" typically being the counterargument.
Of course scope creep inevitably happened - and now you are effectively locked out of many parts of society if you have a poor credit score. We were told it was outright illegal to use credit scores when hiring people (again, 25 years ago) so our fears were unjustified.
Now we're running credit reports on entry level warehouse positions, some volunteer jobs, etc. With every reason to believe it's going to get more pervasive.
As these "social rating" systems get more normalized with consumers, I fully expect to see "novel" new uses and data sharing starting to happen.
Who gets to decide who counts as a jerk? You? Think of somebody who's a jerk. Would you want that person at Uber deciding whether you should get a ride?
This question of "who decides?" is essential. I see snarky response after snarky response that ignores how power and authority corrupt decision-making.
I hope we can all agree that the decision to bar someone from participating in important ways in society should not rest on the unsupervised whims of people in Bay Area meeting rooms.
It’s pretty obvious who decides who is the jerk, the drivers. If you have an average of like 1 Star, is every single driver you’ve ever ridden with wrong? I think this is fine, they’re not drawing an arbitrary line, they’re saying wow if this person has made drivers rate him this badly then they shouldn’t be using the service. This seems entirely reasonable to me - I’ve ridden with some real assholes and don’t take Pool anymore as a result.
“Jerk” could mean anything though. “Jerk” could be girls that don’t flirt back. Or mothers with small children. Or disabled people needing more time getting in and out of the car.
Are you aware of any anecdotes of people saying their rating fell when they didn't flirt back or got on crutches or something? (Your point is still valid even if you don't, I'm just interested)
The big one no one is talking about are non-tippers.
It's becoming downright common for Uber drivers to outright admit they give 1 star ratings for non-cash-tippers.
But yes, I've anecdotally heard of ratings drop for women who typically are type-A chatty, but changed to quiet and withdrawn for a few weeks during major life events. Perhaps that came across as more surely, but just something as silly as someone perceiving a bad attitude from a rider can results in a lower rating score.
I've also talked to drivers who give poor ratings if they have to go well out of their way, and it ends up being a short ride. Sure, this really sucks for the driver - but is it the rider's fault at all? Other unpopular destinations get similar treatment (or so I've heard).
Just one driver? Just ten? Who decides what the threshold should be? And what happens when Uber and Lyft decide to ban riders for criteria other than their star rating? Other tech companies have begun to ban people for reasons having nothing to do with their behavior online.
If they use their momentary advantage to push out other legitimate options for transit, then there is a good argument for regulation protecting riders.
Maybe Uber shouldn't be making any decisions about users. Just present the rating to the driver pool and let drivers decide who they pick up and who they do not. It doesn't entirely solve the issue of "what is a justifiable reason for rating a rider (or driver) poorly?" but it makes it less catastrophic for users.
“Jerks” can be “people who are disabled and require more time getting in and out of the car”. Being on crutches, for instance, will cause your rating to fall. (At least that was my experience while in Boston)
Well the good thing about a marketplace is that when you act poorly at one business, you can still visit another one.
Uber isn't and shouldn't be the only option available to people. The laws that force every company to offer everything to everyone without question are almost always the markets with only one option.
All you're left with is a pseudo-market that offers few of the benefits of real private or public markets. A pretend public service with even less accountability and fewer people profiting from the industry.
> Well the good thing about a marketplace is that when you act poorly at one business, you can still visit another one.
We’re quickly heading to an Uber/Lyft duopoly. And they use similar ratings systems. Soooooo, I’m not sure what your point is. This isn’t a market, it’s a VC funded takeover of transportation.
Drivers have no way of knowing if someone will tip/review before they are prompted for a rating. Drivers rate riders immediately after the ride finishes.
So, yes, they don't base it off the actual review (that may be a service other than Uber that I'm recalling), but they'll often base your review off the review they expect you to give them.
Successful, long-time drivers do not waste there time with this pettiness. Nor do they waste time talking to reporters about insignificant issues like this when that time could be better spent actually making money. I've been driving on and off for 5 years now and all us veterans on the Facebook groups laugh at how silly all the constant nitpicking is.
As with any rating system, there will be outlying bad raters. That's why it is normal for absolutely no one to have a perfect 5 star. It's really not a bid deal.
You’re creating a bit of a “No true Scotsman” fallacy. “No ‘veteran’ driver would rate someone based on tips or their expected rating.”
Yet people are being rated on their tips. People are being rated based on their expected ratings of the driver, regardless of their “success” as a driver.
It’s a big deal because it locks someone out of a system that has forced out its competition (illegally in some cases; such as in London).
I remember all the articles / suggestion that public transit contract with Uber to fill gaps in public transit, or even just to establish it in some areas. That seemed like a horrible idea to contract with a company whose entire existence has been bleeding money....
I got a lot of crap online when raising questions about such ideas from folks I think of as technology fans who really embrace all the disruption and all these convenient things these companies promise etc. Fortunately I see less of that these days.
I struggle to see how anything you described could be categorized as "Orwellian"... Why are we concerned about "problem users" being left with no options? Just act like a normal human and you won't be a problem user... What is "Orwellian" about free markets and voluntary exchange?
The beautiful thing about this comment is that the sentence "Just act like a normal human and you won't be a problem user." would have fit _perfectly_ in 1984.
If the government were mandating people behave a certain way, that would be an entirely different discussion. We're talking about a service that people can choose to use or not use. If they want to use it, they have to comply with the standards set by the service provider...
It's "Orwellian" because people are being judged "problem users" without due process. There's no jury of peers, no possibility of appeal, just an opaque judgment from a private company concerned only with their own profit. If a company becomes a de facto monopoly then they are de facto part of the government, and should be held to government standards.
In the US, at least, they don’t have to be a monopoly to be held to non-discrimination standards. And unless there’s a huge investment in “Uber due process”, this is one-click cloud-powered discrimination.
"Yeah, I mean jeez, what is it with people who can't, like, walk right and stuff? What's even their whole deal? They should just act normal and then it wouldn't be a problem any more!"
I'm not going to make any comparisons to novels or anything. I'm just going to tell you you're acting like an asshole, and you should think about not doing that.
Well, it is not necessarily right if you have 500 users, but I would call it dictatorial rather than orwellian. And it could certainly be a benevolent dictatorship with the right dictator.
The problem with the 1,000,000 users is it becomes harder and harder to have informed people make reasoned decisions based on good information, so you end up relying on processes and proxies. Data and reports. And then you create rules like "whenever data point X reaches threshold Y action Z will be taken". And it is a good rule. Not a perfect rule, because perfect rules are really really hard. And maybe the rule can be gamed a bit. Griefed a bit. And this makes people unhappy and they start complaining, but there are so many of them and they were the ones breaking the rules anyway, and there really isn't time to look into all these complaints, and its impossible to figure out exactly what happened without reading through terabytes of logs so the rules are the rules and people just need to follow them. And so what if they just got a life ban because of a momentary lapse of reason or because an organized group filed a series of false complaints. Life is too short to coddle whiners and toxic people.
I agree with this in general but how does this relate to the article? Uber removing bad riders from the app is clearly a move to protect the drivers. I disagree with the sentiment that this is somehow unethical.
private company becomes defacto monopoly in many cases - private company withdraws service from problem users - those users are left with no options
However, the pattern as it often plays out in the late 20th and early 21st century has a wrinkle: Private company lets competitors occupy distant 2nd and 3rd positions in order to deflect charges of monopoly. The dominant company might even buy stock in the distant competitors to help keep them afloat.
But the final result is beyond Orwellian.
In 2019, if someone gets banned from Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, is there a viable mainstream alternative?
This hasn’t happened at all with Uber? Taxis are still a thing, transit hasn’t been shut down because of Uber. Revenues might be down, yes, but Uber is not remotely approaching a monopoly.
The 5 star rating system being used reminds me a lot of eBay's feedback system. eBay's system has changed quite a lot over the years, and much could be said about each change they made, but specifically the 5 star system and the bar they set was always problematic because of the disconnect between what buyers thought a fair rating was vs what eBay considered fair.
In eBay land, anything less than 5 stars is unacceptable, but for most normal people if you asked them they might say 3 stars is fair for a perfectly acceptable experience. If you get too many 3 star ratings from happy satisfied customers your average might drop from 4.9 to 4.7 and suddenly you're on thin ice and at risk of having your account closed.
Looking at this article it appears Uber is using a similar system. They require an average rating of 4.6-- meaning every 4 star review you get is actually a ding against you-- even though those 4 star reviews might've been perfectly happy riders who just felt in their minds that 4 = Good, 5 = Outstanding or something.
eBay is a great example of a feedback system with different expectations than a naive user might assume.
I used it mostly when you had positive, neutral, and negative. One might think that taking a few extra days to ship something or an item not being in quite as pristine condition as advertised was probably a good candidate for a neutral. Not bad/not perfect.
But that wasn't really the expectation. Neutral was more like "It took me two weeks of emailing but I finally heard back from the seller and they shipped the item which really wasn't as described but I just wanted the transaction done at that point" Negative was "They shipped me a box full of bricks and made me pay the postage."
The local bus service in my city between the Bay Area and Sacramento reduced frequency and coverage last year. Their suggestion was to just use a ride-sharing app. It's not just cab companies.
Strikes me as something that may violate “failure to haul” laws in many municipalities. While there are a lot of egregious, openly racist, refusals by (e.g, NYC) cabbies to pick up black or Latino riders, chasing down individual cabbies means that local commissions rarely show their teeth on that issue. But going after a giant centralized concern, especially one now answerable to shareholders, is a different story.
> For drivers, they face a risk of deactivation if they fall below 4.6
This is absurd. Even though I feel like some drivers deserve 3 or 4 stars I always give 5 because I had no idea what Uber does with these ratings. This confirms that I was doing the right thing. Just because I give 3 or 4 stars doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to ride with them again. They just aren't the best of the best.
The problem is that there will always be people that always give 5 stars, so drivers would be punished for picking up people that leave other ratings. Sure it might bring the average down to 4.2 for example. Maybe they should adjust the rating based on the average rating left by the rider.
I feel it's not my business to understand Uber's intent with the ratings. They ask me for my honest rating, on a scale that goes from 1-5. Why should we assume that 1-4 are essentially saying "fire this person", and only one value means keep them. I find it particularly absurd. I routinely rate 2, 3, 4, etc. based on my own gauge. What Uber wants to do with that data is their prerogative.
Well congratulations for sticking it to the low paid drivers in the name of defending your ego.
I agree that the rating system is stupid, but also that there's a position of power that comes with being a rider. Assuming you had a safe, pleasant journey, it should be a 5 star journey. If the driver was objectively rude, the car dirty, or you felt unsafe, then obviously that's a good case to rate someone lower.
Right, but most people would still look at the effect of their actions on other people, even if indirectly.
Same reason I always rate customer service reps a 5 (unless something really appalling happened). Most companies would prefer you not provide feedback at all than provide a lower 5 rating on a 1-5 scale.
Sure, you don't have any responsibility to understand what is going to happen with the ratings, but once you do, it seems overly punitive to give low ratings.
I think this is basically a argument that star ratings are worthless, rather than that using all 5 stars makes more sense. Obviously, many Uber drivers do keep >4.6 ratings for extended periods. And since most people presumably don't know about the 4.6 rule, it's not a collective concession to Uber's standards; people are just genuinely rating drivers 5 stars much of the time.
I recommend (to everyone interested) asking a few friends how they use star ratings, on Uber or anywhere else. My experience is that people say all of "I give three stars for average", "I give four stars for average because we're used to grade inflation", and "I give 5 stars unless there was a reason to subtract from it".
Given that, star ratings without explicit guidance on meaning are sort of a disaster. I'm not so much annoyed by which number Uber ties people's livelihoods to as by the whole decision to use a bad system when so many better ones are available.
You are a shit human being if you go around willfully endangering people’s livelihoods and smugly justifying it to yourself by deflecting the blame onto Uber.
The question any moral person asks themselves before they perform an action is “am I hurting someone by doing this”. Not “can I hurt people and then rules-lawyer the blame onto someone else”.
I'm not the one firing anyone. If Uber makes the absurd decision to fire someone before they have a 4.2 rating, that is entirely on them.
If I tell you to sing the National Anthem all day and all night, or else I'll kill my neighbor, would you be at fault if you opt not to and and as a result I choose to kill my neighbor?
I would reserve the high standards for some other setting (tech workers perhaps). Driving uber is worse than retail - nearly 100% of work is customer facing, the environment is cutthroat and many drivers can't catch a break (financial pressure, hard times that sort of thing).
And uber has huge surplus of drivers - they are going to cull hard, and driver volume will still be high in their major profit centers.
I don't rate drivers. It's an unnecessarily self centred approach to what should be a uniformly acceptable service. I don't see why if I'm having a shitty day and a driver ticks me off that I should really have any impact over their ability to work.
I had drivers who were clueless about using a navigator, couldn't find my location on the map, drove crazily or made comments about
random women walking in the street.
One time I contacted uber when my driver got out of the car and punched a pedestrian. I still didn’t rate the driver. I just reported the incident. I also ended my ride when that happened. Hopefully he was arrested, but I didn’t stick around to find out.
I don't see how they can expect most rides to be a 5* experience. Most hotels aren't 5* hotels. Most films aren't 5* films. What do they think drivers should be doing in order to deliver such an extraordinary experience every time?
People say if it's a normal ride you should give 5* (and I do because I don't want to cause the driver problems if it's been fine), but you don't award a functional hotel room 5*, or award a restaurant 3 Michelin stars because their food was ok.
The reason the average is high is because so many people give five stars for everything. To drop below 4.6, they're probably getting one and two star reviews for some rides.
It doesn't matter? Regardless of how people distribute their scores, as long as there is some overall correlation to quality, then there would be a cutoff at some point (as long as Uber decides to remove drivers below a certain cutoff). It just so happens that based on the aggregate data that they see, it is 4.6. It could be any arbitrary number, and anyone's personal anecdote on how they rate drivers doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
It absolutely does matter, because it leads to "grade inflation" - people change their rating because, like the parent comment, they know that anything besides a 5 is voting to get the driver fired. Indeed, I'm only willing to give someone below a 5-star rating if I think I got really horrible service.
But all that does is move up the threshold. Feels like you and the parent comment are assuming the threshold stays fixed. That is most likely not the case. Uber is setting the stars threshold at some arbitrary number to achieve some quality goal based on their internal data. Its not like Uber can't see the distribution of stars. Based on how people vote, they pick a cutoff in order to achieve their quality goals. If people change the way they are rating drivers, that cutoff will change as well.
I wonder when a secondary market will open for highly rated Uber accounts. I can see a future where you have to buy a 4.8 account so that you can get a taxi at peak times.
So I call in and ask to have a high-rated account summon an Uber to my location. Of course it would make sense to centralize this. Congratulations, we've reinvented taxi dispatch.
This is fantastic. If the markups are high enough, I can imagine people who have the job of just taking uber rides all day to grind up ratings for good passenger uber accounts. Reminiscent of faction grinding in MMOs. Life imitates art.
How confident are we that, for example, you don't get rated lower in a given city of you're a member of the wrong ethnic group? Has anybody ever looked at these ratings (for drivers too, I guess) with an eye toward determining which biases exist?
Regardless, Uber should be able to detect those biases and hopefully correct for them. It wouldn't look too good if a discriminated group start getting kicked off
I personally find the idea that a driver has a 'star rating' kind of absurd. It feels like the most pernickety thing.
If my taxi goes to where I want to go, doesn't take a silly detour for money, and doesn't physically assault me, I'm good.
Outside of that, who cares, really? Where and who are these princesses that really care if their cab driver is a 4.2 or 4.6?
I tend to rate basically everyone in service interactions 5 stars because the fact they even turn up to their minimum wage job is a colossal privilege for me to enjoy.
Like, would you rate your bus driver if you could? Your checkout operator? Why? What possible benefit do you derive from that to outweigh the embarassment (to _both_ parties)?
You don't get to pick your driver, so the driver ratings really don't matter to any particular user for a given ride.
IMO the driver ratings make sense, and give the driver incentive to not take purposefully long routes, to not ignore your requests to adjust the A/C, to not talk on their phone, etc.
I have been in countless cab riders where it is clear the driver does not care at all what you think about the ride or the overall experience, and they know you can't really do anything about it (other than maybe not tip them).
I agree with your point
"I tend to rate basically everyone in service interactions 5 stars because the fact they even turn up to their minimum wage job is a colossal privilege for me to enjoy."
But one thing I like about rating things is that it gives you a way to flag things that go badly. That's what sucked so much about taxis - you'd be ripped off, forced to pay cash, order a car only to wait (and then it not arrive), or wait out for 30 minutes to flag one down. Drivers would be rude, they'd talk on their phones, they'd drive dangerously. And you'd have to grin and bear it (I've experienced all of the above).
It's hard for me to imagine what a "four star Uber ride" looks like. I can think of non-catastrophic issues; maybe the driver has their car details in wrong and is hard to find, or urges you to get out somewhere not that close to the destination because it's a more convenient way to pick up another ride. But a 4-star rating does nothing to solve that, it just adds a bit to the risk of being fired somewhere down the line.
Given that, it just feels like a crummy affectation around a "report issue" button. If a driver was actually doing something dangerous, when would I ever want to handle that with one star instead of some actual context like "crossed three lanes with no signal then ran a red light"?
There are drivers who flat out can't drive. Sure, they got me to the destination without crashing, but I've had ones who were sawing away at the wheel like they where trying to start a fire and used the accelerator and brakes as if they were boolean controls.
That's not a 5. I find Uber and Lyft drivers to be providing a great service at a fair price and most of them earn a 5 rating and a tip.
I've had Uber drivers who had cars that were in such poor repair that the ride was physically uncomfortable. Like they had no shocks in the car. To me, it was a minor inconvenience because I was hung over. Someone with a more serious medical problem might have had an even worse time.
I've also had drivers who had absolutely no idea where they were going. To the point where they couldn't even follow the GPS reliably and I had to constantly tell them to get in a different lane or we were going to miss an exit and add significant time on to the trip. This was on the way to the airport, so it was kind of important to get there without a lot of detours. It turned out they didn't even live in my city and had not driven around here at all before.
I do think the 1-5 stars is stupid because people interpret that differently. If it's essentially 5 stars = ok, < 5 stars = "fire this driver", then they should just make it a thumbs up /thumbs down rating.
I dont use Uber, when they say fall below a 4.6, is that on a scale of 1 - 10? If Uber were smart they'd just charge these problem customers more money. it'd help them financially and kill two birds with one stone.
I wish Uber would get rid of their executives/employees that also dont meet this "Safety and Respect" policy they are imposing on users. The company has such a reputation of being a deplorable company this is a really two-faced policy. Do as I say, not as we do.
Hmm, so say you get rid of the worst 10% of riders, because they're "significantly below average". But that then pushes up the average, so you get rid of another 10%. Repeat until everyone is top marks?
And its based on city, so if you get banned in your own city, could you get a ride in your own city? What about the opposite?
What happens when you go on holiday to X, but aren't aware of cultural norm Y. Are you then barred when you get home?
“The episode is set in a world where people can rate each other from one to five stars for every interaction they have, which can impact their socioeconomic status”
Anecdotally it looks like I have a 4.75 rider rating which I was hit by a low rating one time because the driver cancelled the ride probably because it wasn’t very far or some other reason. Extending this to real world penalties changes behavior. Ever do a customer interaction where the seller (say a car dealer or a mortgage broker) tells you a survey will be coming and to please rate then 5 stars?
I generally give 5 stars because giving a low rating (a) could cost me, by leading the driver to retaliate with a low rating for me, and (b) has negligible benefit to me.
Note that I only use Uber when traveling on business to large cities. So my policy described above always impacts me, but has never impacted any particular Uber driver more than once.
> I generally give 5 stars because giving a low rating (a) could cost me, by leading the driver to retaliate with a low rating for me, and (b) has negligible benefit to me.
Someone said elsewhere in this thread that the driver only sees your rating after they've rated you. Although I'm not sure if it's possible for them to go back and change their rating of you if they see you've rated them poorly.
The problem is that the rating is a bargaining chip and there is no way around that issue.
The rating is currency and is being treated as such.
In all honesty, there should be a "Flag bad ride" and nothing else. No positive ratings. If it was a good ride, you just do nothing. Your rating should be a rolling average of the number of flags you've gotten compared to the population with the more recent flags being weighted more.
That way if you're not flagged as often as most people, it won't matter. Your rating will take a temporary dip. If you're flagged more often than average, it means something.
And flagging a bad ride should be a fairly involved process to prevent people from just using it on a whim. In order to flag a ride, you should have to expend some effort for it.
I was banned from Uber for getting a refund on a ride that never came to pick me up. 13 lifetime rides from 2015 until 2017. Their recruiters still reach out to me on a regular basis.
This should be problematic. Uber should not be in the position of choosing who is served by its business.
The whole “ratings” aspect is preposterous. There’s no independent way to appeal a rating and get redress. It’s just as bad as 360 reviews—at least 360 reviews are a blunt tool to unload underperformers.
I think these app ratings systems are worse and should not be enough to ban a passenger.
I disagree, the ratings are averages, so outliers should be naturally smoothed out. You should not need to appeal any 1 (or 2) bad ratings, if the rest of your ratings keep your average up. However, if you are consistently being rated such that your average is in the 3's, maybe you need to think about how you conduct yourself along the way.
First, out of principle I have an issue with a middling rating of “3” being “bad”. One should be “bad”, two needs improvement, etc.
That said, imagine if Walmart or Wholefoods banned customers because they had middling ratings. If they shoplift, vandalize, (is in Uber’s case vomitus, vandalizing, assault, etc.) They should follow with criminal complaints, etc.
My problem is with unilateral banning —not the banning in principle as there are some good cases for it, but they are rare.
The threshold for banning needs to be scrutinized for essential services. There's potential to really hurt people's quality of life, particularly people that are already disadvantaged. An arbitrary star rating scale with no clear definitions is definitely not appropriate.
Public transit doesn't ban you if you're loud or smelly. Private rideshare may. As rideshare takes over ridership from transit, mobility is removed from loud and smelly people.
I tend to agree - critical services like transportation should have some oversight in how they're gatekeeping. Another example is Stripe - some small number of users are incorrectly flagged by their fraud detection and couldn't use a large number of services that have Stripe as their payment processor.
I instinctively find this utterly repulsive, evil, no different to China’s social credit scoring.
How can an average of 4.6 be meaningful for determining fitness to ride - that’s a rediculous number.
A mechanism for preventing truly abusive or violent riders should be based on specific reporting and video evidence, not a dumb aggregate score.
I am generally against regulation if possible, but this insane policy requires urgent remedy by regulators, Uber is becoming an important part of our travel infrastructure, so requires regulation just like rail, air etc.
The thing is though that the ratings are given by humans. No algorithms here. Which means there are almost definitely going to be racial disparity. Even if we assume the ultimate ideal of nobody who uses uber is a racist, cognitive biases are a real thing and you're not going to be able to stamp them out in the large.
Algorithms do not create racism out of thin air, all the racial preferences are in the data. This didn't stop a bunch of projects from becoming crucified in the media recently.
I read an MIT study which said Uber pays women less than men, and they pay according to an algorithm that does not use sex as a factor. Would you have anticipated a lawsuit there?
Wouldn't it make more sense to have some sort of "Flag rider for community guidelines violation" button, as opposed to using star ratings for this?
Stars are subjective. Many people seem to think that "five stars" means a normal ride with nothing to complain about. Personally, I think a normal ride should be three stars—five stars should mean you went above and beyond in some way. And I'm not even sure what that would be in the context of a customer.
The problem with Uber ratings is that most people use them as binary. A small number of 1 starts will quickly bring your rating below average. I used to take short rides to and from work daily for some time and it seems my rating took a large hit. I frequently saw a lot of drivers giving me 1 stars. I know a lot of people (riders), who frequently give 1 stars. I think it would be better if Uber replaces the 5 start system with 3 or 2 stars.
I'm a polite person, but I sometimes wear drag or makeup or gender non-conforming outfits. I also use Uber frequently in areas that are less tolerant than the Bay Area.
The last time me and my friends played a game of "share your Uber rating" on Facebook, my Uber rating was lower than nearly all my friends. Coincidence?
I foresee a class action suit in the near future. Handicapped people take longer to get in and out of the car. Uber’s rate them lower for it (this has been my personal experience, Boston). With this, handicapped people are denied services because of their handicap. Cut and dry violation of ADA (or whatever it is that determines protected classes).
I just don't think the cliff Uber will use for cutting off riders is going to be "got 3* a few times for taking too long to get in and out of a car." Drivers aren't quitting Uber because of those riders. They're going to be cutting off people routinely rated 1* for being dangerously intoxicated, ranting about minorities, making passes at drivers, etc.
The problem is that usually when a place decides to refuse service to a person, there is a single person making that decision who can be held accountable for it in the event an issue comes up with protected classes. What people “think the cliff will be” is irrelevant, the problem is lack of accountability. There is no way to show that they aren’t violating protected statuses, and there is no accountability if they are.
The overheated reactions in this thread are so bizarre. The only surprising thing is the implication that only now is it possible to get yourself banned from Uber for bad behavior as a passenger.
This headline confused me, because I thought this was already how Uber worked! I knew drivers had a firing threshold and passengers had ratings; given that drivers can't freely reject pickups, I don't understand what the point of rating passengers was prior to this.
Of course, it was definitely possible to get yourself banned for bad behavior before this, I've known people who were banned. It looks like the change here is allowing algorithmic bans based only on score. I can see why people object to that, although again I had always assumed it was the point of the scores.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 190 ms ] threadI'd be curious to know what the passenger cut-off ratings are, and what thus what kind of behavior is actually kicking people off the app.
Also, if there's some inherent racial or other protected class bias in the kinds of ratings that people get, then Uber could be in a world of trouble here.
I take short trips, that's the only reason I can think of for a low rating.
> For drivers, they face a risk of deactivation if they fall below 4.6
For me, I often rate drivers below 5 for the following common reasons:
These are professional drivers so I hold them to professional standards with respect to: maintaining their equipment, maintaining a safety standard, and knowing navigation.Edit: Yes TPMS is super flaky. I own three cars equipped with TPMS and I've invested a great deal of time/money in maintaining them. But I keep them all in working condition. I can only assume that some of you poo-poo'ing TPMS are unaware of the Firestone Ford Debacle that caused close to 300 deaths [1]. Under inflated tires are no-joke. Suggesting that it's ok to defeat a critical safety system is laughable. Also I live in CA so it's not a snow-tire issue.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_contro...
So if you are going to downgrade for that, at least have a look at the tires directly and see if one is obviously lower than the others.
It would be worth looking into getting.
My previous car, 2010 VW I could switch from summer to winter wheels/tires and drive away. TPMS would figure it out just fine. Now I have a Subaru and am debating buying a $100 tool to reset them. It won't take long to pay for itself, but as it is now, the light is still on.
Worse, my Ram has positional sensors and I haven't seen any "cheap" tools. It happens to be the same set of wheels, but I rotated them and it expects different pressure in the front vs rear. The light is on and it yells at every start because the rear tires are underinflated. How hard can it be for a car to learn which tire is on which corner of the vehicle?
[1]: https://m.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/techpage.jsp?techid=27...
https://info.kaltire.com/all-weather-vs-all-season-vs-winter...
It doesn't help that it is completely opaque what the thresholds are for when the warning light goes off; I also don't know whether one is supposed to recalibrate anything if you change the type of tire that you are running - for instance, I run snow tires during the winter that have a different PSI rating than my all-seasons the rest of the year...
Maybe it's reasonable to report the CEL in that situation since it's something most riders will notice and can easily be verified by Uber with a photo unlike the condition of the mechanical bits themselves.
It really isn't. (very) low tire pressure is a major safety risk. The TPMS sensors I've had all seem to go off at minor deviations (few psi) from the tire pressure; deviations that aren't a safety risk.
A useful reminder that the winter is coming, but hardly a major safety risk.
> The TPMS sensors I've had all seem to go off at minor deviations
Good (IMHO)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_contro...
If that's your level of risk sensitivity, don't get in a car.
Still, both statistics illustrate the point - 300 deaths a few decades ago involving faulty tires that may have been exacerbated by manufacturer-recommended underinflation have basically 0 bearing on the marginal risk of driving with a TPMS warning light illuminated.
Same with "check engine." My last car had the check engine light on from years 3 to 15, when I sold it. The reason was a faulty sensor but the actual mechanics were sound and not worth fixing.
I'm amused that you think you're holding drivers to professional standards. Professionals know when to ignore the dummy lights intended for the masses...
...which is not to say you should change anything, because Uber drivers ARE the masses, so it makes little sense to treat them like professionals!
Uber simply organized hitchhiking.
Some Nissan models used to have a fun version of this where the check engine light came on to notify you about a problem with... the check engine light. It was a bug, obviously, but not a sensor wrongly detecting a fault. Rather, the car's only way of saying "if something goes wrong the check engine light might not activate" was to activate the check engine light.
Whatever the underlying issue, I assume software, replacing sensors didn't work and resetting the light would only last for a few hundred miles. It was effectively impossible to keep the light working, so the mechanic-recommended fix was to just disable it.
Which can make it impossible to pass state emissions/safety testing, because they expect to see all the lights turn on at power-up.
The trick is to rewire the light to some other light instead ;)
> That light will pop for reasons ranging from synchronization issues
Yes that exactly correct. It's based on an engineering principle called fail-safe:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-safe
When the light is on, you have no assurance that the tires are properly inflated. Period. If the TPMS light is off, you can be well-assured that tires are inflated properly.
Yes, the system is finicky (by design). Yes the system can be costly to maintain (I do it myself it's it expensive and time-consuming). These are the responsibilities one must take on if they wish to be transporting the public.
I mean, you could always, you know, check. With a tire pressure gauge. Like on every car ever that didn't have this TP thingy. Honestly, you don't even need to do that - if the tire is low enough to be a safety risk, it will be visibly flat.
Would you down-rate an Uber just for not having this sensor at all?
Doesn’t always work for gradual pressure loss, and doesn’t tell me which tire, but that’s what the gauge is for.
On many cars, TPMS sensor problems cause the light to blink at startup, then stay on steadily just like you had a low tire. That includes "the tire doesn't have a sensor", which can save about $200 on each valve stem. Given how quickly an Uber driver can rack up mileage, I wouldn't be surprised if many of them are just saving money on tires by getting sensor-less ones.
(Admittedly you can't tell if they're checking the pressure manually; I would think so to save on tire lifespan, but it's obviously not guaranteed. Of course, not seeing the light isn't a guarantee either.)
Otherwise, you need to put your dirty tires in the back seat, drive to a shop, pay $100 and wait for an hour or two to get them swapped and balanced.
And if you're paying that much for the added safety/performance, you're not the kind of person who needs TPMS to nag them into inflating to the proper pressure.
Presumably you're buying snow tires for safety reasons. Proper tire pressure is important for traction, thus safety. And winter is the time when tire pressure fluctuates the most.
genuinely curious, why? I thought tire pressure fluctuations were linearly related to air temperature fluctuations. does the temperature vary more in the winter than in the summer?
That said, I mostly end up checking my tires more in the winter because I care more; if a tire is only a few pounds low I'd still prefer to handle it before I have to go drive on snow during a cold snap.
What kind of car requires $200 TPMS sensors? Most are in the $35-$55 range, even on very high end cars.
Not necessarily, it could be that the sensor is either defective or missing, which doesn't mean the tire pressure is wrong.
Read about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fail-safe
Regardless, it seems an incredibly insensitive thing to give a poor rating over.
We do have to swap our tires for winter tires up north, so I'm not getting tires with the sensors.
I highly doubt that 95% claim though.
My TPMS is failed, so I keep a pressure gauge in the car and check once a week because I can't afford to fix it.
Same with my girlfriend's car, but it's even dumber. The sensor in her spare has failed.
Even the check engine light... are they supposed to stop making income until they can fix their O2 sensor? Surely that isn't a safety issue.
Stop being an antisocial asshole. Not everyone has infinite choice in what they can do for work.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Firestone_Ford#Family
I also feel compelled to give drivers 5 stars because people IMO tend to look down at anything less than the best. I realize it's not the most accurate comparison, but would you buy from an ebay/amazon reseller who had a 80% approval rating?
I’ve noticed that my friends who are not great at marketing themselves usually have a lower rating.
With Uber you’re paying for a professional driver (they’re being paid, so they’re a pro by definition) to take you from A to B. There shouldn’t be any obligation to engage in anything but pleasantries.
But this is their job, and I'm paying for the service with my money. It's not the passenger's responsibility or obligation to socialize with the driver. The passenger's responsibility is to be there on time, not mess up the car, and pay.
[1]: https://ride.guru/lounge/p/do-uber-drivers-give-negative-rat...
I started tipping the drivers cash which helped, but then I realized it was easier to just use a taxi at the airport. It would only cost a few dollars more, and I wouldn't have to wait for the driver to get through 20 minutes of airport traffic to pick me up. I also didn't have to worry about my rating if I pissed off the driver (especially for short airport fares the drivers seem to like telling me that their credit card machine was broken. Argue with them a bit and the machine magically starts working).
I found out by talking with some other drivers who revealed such a scheme. It was discussed on local passenger forums as well.
Anytime I get a low rating, I reciprocate with the same, or lower.
Won’t work too well if you frequently take a lot of rides.
The ones who will give you 5 stars usually do it right away in front of you; if they seem weirdly secretive about it, you're probably not getting 5 stars.
A few years ago I started dating a girl who had nearly a 5 star rating. She eventually moved in with me and since then nearly all my trips are together. We are often late arriving to the meeting point, she has no hesitation to ask the driver to change the air temperature, adjust the music station or volume, open or close windows, always takes water when available, and asks to be dropped off at a given point regardless of traffic lights or inconvenient turns for the driver. Since this started, my rating has steadily climbed and is now around 4.8.
If I had to bet, I would say both factors (and others we aren't considered) are at play.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Franklin_effect
I always try to be very autonomous and ask the minimum favors/services from people, trying not to bother them. This has caused me trouble several times, from people that were supposed to help me. When I was doing track and field two decades ago I had a sports sponsorship cancelled essentially because I didn't ask any extra gear.
When you ask a favor and the person fulfills it, they get to be useful and it gives them purpose. I have found that this varies from people to people.
The Uber driver will most likely feel good if you actually need his help as a human being rather than just be a mindless vehicle operator.
Of course, occasionally you’re going to get low rated passengers who are just straight up assholes. So there’s some risk.
Have you tried asking? I asked a few drivers, at the end of a ride and after I’d rated them, what I could do better. Two complained about my taking work calls in the car. I started requesting permission, at the beginning of the ride, to take a phone call. (It’s their car, after all.) Never been refused. Rating jumped from ~4.4 to ~4.9.
I’ll also note that some of the sweetest people I know have terrible ratings for constantly being late, at the wrong pick-up spot or other little reasons. It’s mostly a rating around if you’re observant and treat the driver like a human being more than if you’re a good person.
(Note: I’m a guy. I don’t think gender is as powerful as other comments assume.)
Seriously? It's their car that you've contracted to take you from Point A to Point B. It would never occur to me to ask permission before making (or taking) a phone call.
Generally in the rides I'm in the driver is still listening to whatever music they like, which obviously they can't do if the passenger is trying to have a phone conversation.
OTOH, while they can do whatever they want, the expectation seems to be that both driver and rider give top scores barring one or the other doing something that clearly deviates from the norms of taxi driver or passenger behavior.
In any case, I'm pretty confident that I'm normally polite and if someone gives me a lower score now and then on one of these services, I really don't care.
It's only fair if the expectations were made known before you ordered the ride.
It wouldn’t have to me, either. But I was curious and so asked, and in between the useless answers I got that repeating point of feedback.
Note that I didn’t stop taking calls. But I did think “how would I behave if I were in a friend’s car?” I figured I’d at least give a heads up that a call was coming in. So I tried that one thing and it worked.
Furthermore if I were driving with a friend someplace and they got a call, I’d think nothing of them answering it and having a conversation.
This is a fair view. It’s also fair to treat a driver as a new acquaintance. And it makes sense that the drivers who have a choice (i.e. are higher rated) will choose riders who treat them like that.
My point isn’t everyone has to do these things. Just that if you care about your rating, asking for feedback and offering common courtesies cab go a long way. (I’ve also found it improves my disposition, but that’s a separate matter.)
On the rare occasions I use Uber or Lyft today, I’m polite and friendly/chatty enough depending on the circumstances but someone’s doing a job for me and I don’t owe them anything beyond basic politeness.
It monopolizes the noise in the area and puts everyone else in some sort of awkward space where they have to eavesdrop and pretend they aren't. Sometimes I think about obviously watching a train commuter have a long and loud phone conversation, but I don't because it would be rude and aggressive.
I guess hired cars are a little different in most respects but people can still feel bad or awkward for listening in on something they aren't part of. Especially if the conversation is loud, personal, or confidential.
It's much better if the phone call is urgent, short, or important. But even then it's polite to be conciliatory as the phone call is made or picked up.
And no, I've never considered asking "how I can do better". They're providing the service, not me, and I'm paying them.
That's ridiculous. Who is paying who again?
It’s a two-sided market. Nobody likes being treated like a commodity.
That's insane. Do those drivers think that it's part of the deal that you should be entertaining them?
It would be interesting to see how the average rating compares between young women vs men.
It's crazy that you won't be able to take public transportation like Uber because of your political beliefs or because of who you are.
Start? Uber already blocked police from using their service in certain jurisdictions.
Not so much ideologically motivated, rather trying to evade the enforcement of local laws.
As for racial / protected class bias in ratings - I'm not sure what Uber would hit that something like Tinder wouldn't, since all the ratings are from other "users".
Posting racially-discriminating for-rent ads gets both the landlord and the newspaper in trouble. "We're just a platform" doesn't work as an excuse.
It's also not hard to detect statistically - with enough data you can see that a given driver is giving worse ratings to protected class members compared to similar drivers at the same time and place.
And the account holder won’t account for all riders (and could be different than the account holder entirely).
This will of course lead to a situation where some hooligans opt into a protected class just to mess with the system. Even still, on large number of rides it will even out.
My rating did go up after going to India. (Probably because of the numerous amounts of rides I took there)
When I've driven people around, even people I've barely met (say friends-of-friends), I've always preferred that they sit in the front. I was never a pro driver though.
Driving around even casual acquaintances (e.g. friends-of-friends) is a totally different dynamic where it would seem a bit odd for them to sit in the back seat as if you were their chauffeur even if you sort of are.
That's how you answer that question I guess... :)
I'm in Brazil, no idea what my city average is.
Maybe it's just because I'm a gringo in Mexico? Maybe I should use a little more small talk charm? Or offer them gum? Improve my accent? Bring them a bottle of S.Pellegrino, nicely chilled? It's a stupid system.
Edit: A sibling comment inspired me to ask my girlfriend for her rating. It's a 4.89. Yet she always stays inside until the Uber driver arrives to pick her up, often honking outside for her while she finally starts turning off lights and shutting the house down.
I also am white and live in Mexico (Playas de Tijuana). My rating is 4.81. I have been going on the assumption that I am kind of ugly looking, although its hard for me to be objective about it.
I do always give tips though. They usually have three choices, like 10, 15, or 20 pesos, and I always pick the highest option. Sometimes for a longer trip I will put like 38 pesos tip. Maybe there is some way for drivers to track tips and somehow that can affect a rating?
I always say thanks for the ride when I get in and out.
My Spanish is very limited and I rarely attempt to say anything in Spanish except for buena noche or something like that. In this area around 33-40% of the drivers speak English.
This is almost all that matters now. Any drivers forum will be full of drivers basically talking about how they give lower ratings if you don't tip cash. A few are even full-on blatant about it in person if you bring it up.
After time I think we'll see things coalesce around only riders who pay cash tips get 5 star ratings.
Does Uber deactivate drivers that fall below a certain rating? Even if they don't, I presume lower ratings would hurt a driver more than they would a passenger.
So if a driver is trying to pull this it wouldn't end out great for either party, I would presume?
This is me as a rider:
a) Always at pickup on time (or I message "be right there" if I'm a minute away)
b) I enter and say "Hi, how's it going?" and acknowledge.
c) I then put in my headphones for audible. I say nothing else the rest of the trip.
d) I get out where it's most convenient for them, and I say "Thank you", and gently shut the door.
Yep, apparently they don't care - my rating hangs out in low 4.7s.
However, Uber Black always boosts my ratings, because the drivers are more mature and rate based on what actually matters.
- private company innovates a service that people use all the time - private company is so successful it displaces other, existing, methods of doing the same - private company becomes defacto monopoly in many cases - private company withdraws service from problem users - those users are left with no options
In the case of Uber, it is kind of obvious, as there are areas where they have displaced (put out if business) numerous private cab and car service companies.
Each step is a reasonable progression through our system. I don’t think anyone should be blamed for each step.
But the final result is beyond Orwellian.
You forgot the juiciest parts:
- private company plays on legal gray areas on purpose
- private company invest aggressively to expand faster than law can react in order to grab said monopoly
This is basically capital cancer, they had a real value but dismissed everything a company is to a society:
- stable for employees
- stable for users
- stable for society
Any company can play rough when let loose with massive funds, but when reality occurs, just like anybody else, they'll have to round their corners and .. surprise.. they stop being interested and competitive.
Complaining about Uber's employment model instead of discussing this really important control question just annoys me. It deflects a potentially interesting conversation into grievance-airing about gig jobs.
On the contrary, we need to really understand how we got here first, in order to be able to recognize patterns of the problem and determine how to avoid it in the future.
As the saying goes, those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
The crux of your argument is we shouldn’t care about how we get there but what happens next or essentially, how do we react.
If you want to solve a problem, identify and fix the root cause instead of reactively applying some patch to cover the bleeding.
Getting “annoyed” at someone discussing the root cause is misguided.
I would argue that your comment is the bad comment. Lots of unproven assertions, and it all began with a needless, toxic attack
Also it still perplexes me that Uber managed to convince so many people with their bullshit PR campaign about the small upstart facing the Taxi Mafia - when from the beginning it was a heavily-funded company, later turned multinational corporation, fighting small local providers with underhand tactics.
I remember having to use "car services" just because the taxis were so unpleasant.
"You bet ya!", he said, "I'm on vacation!" he said. He went on to talk about how the taxi cab industry was a dirty industry and uber/lyft reformed it.
Meanwhile one of my journalist friends declaims the "tyranny" of Uber/Lyft. It's not hyperbole its simply inaccurate.
No, they didn't. At least, not in most US cities - I don't know how the laws work abroad. All a taxi medallion does is allow you to accept rides from people that hail you from the street. That's it. Limo companies and vans that you scheduled beforehand did not need medallions. There's functionally not much different from the service Uber provides and existing charter services, except for the fact that Uber used technology to make scheduling rides much faster.
The "Taxi Mafia" very much existed, though calling it a cartel is probably more accurate. Governments deliberately constrained the supply of taxis through medallions. Naturally, this resulted in inflated prices and poor service due to lack of competition. There's a reason why many people have little sympathy for the taxi industry's struggles to compete with ride sharing: taxis sucked.
I guess they did have insurance (again, at least in the states), but so do Uber drivers.
I abhor cabs.
I don't use Uber or taxis often, but have used both several times over the years. There's never been a practical difference for me. If anything, Uber is less convenient because I need to sign up and install an app. Maybe one was a little cheaper, but not so much that I noticed.
> - stable for employees
> - stable for users
> - stable for society
No. Stability comes at the expense of dynamism. Innovation disrupts stability, and society is more often than not better off for it. You pay a needless tax whenever you buy a CD or flash drive which gets handed off to record companies in the presumption that you will pirate music. Politicians decided that the music industry needed more stability, and passed laws to make consumers fork over tax money to subsidize them.
There was a push to make ride-share companies wait at least 30 minutes before pairing riders up with a car. Not to guarantee any sort of safety or to fight congestion. It was literally just degrading service in order to make taxi companies more competitive with Uber, Lyft, etc.
Trying to achieve stability frequently hurts users and degrades quality of service.
https://nylpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Still-Left-Behi...
Uber - 96% WAV availability, 6 min WAV wait time
Lyft - 63% WAV availability, 12 min WAV wait time
I don’t believe that Uber and Lyft have made the problem significantly worse than it already was.
It's like the difference between an injury and a chronic disease.
I'm generally not a big fan of database driven black lists.
They have all the problems of bad decisions individuals make with much more impact and much less recourse.
It is really more like having one cashier at a grocery store refuse to ring you up as opposed to the grocery store chain not allowing you inside because the cashiers decided you weren't delightful enough, even if that was because your child was loud a few times.
When it is the cashier, you have a bit of recourse, after all. When it is the chain, you have very little recourse and not only that, but now you have to figure out where else to shop. It might not be so bad in a town with many grocery stores, but it'll be mighty inconvenient if you have to drive to the next town to shop.
Low-star riders make the drivers' experiences worse. That's why they're low rated.
The Orwellian aspect is when companies start sharing their scores, and when those scores start having clearly highly subjective influences.
As a society, we put up with a lot of terrible behavior and people get away with it because they don't care about making a scene or situation that is uncomfortable for everyone else. We pay higher prices to deal with these people's behavior: constantly complaining until they get free stuff, abusing return policies, review blackmail, vandalizing state/national parks, cutting lines, etc.
You're right though that we need very strong guarantees around the sources and accuracy of such a metric.
Don't worry - I was told they are optional, and you only need them for major things like if you getting a new car or house financed. Anyone worried about these things were mocked with the slippery slope "fallacy" typically being the counterargument.
Of course scope creep inevitably happened - and now you are effectively locked out of many parts of society if you have a poor credit score. We were told it was outright illegal to use credit scores when hiring people (again, 25 years ago) so our fears were unjustified.
Now we're running credit reports on entry level warehouse positions, some volunteer jobs, etc. With every reason to believe it's going to get more pervasive.
As these "social rating" systems get more normalized with consumers, I fully expect to see "novel" new uses and data sharing starting to happen.
This question of "who decides?" is essential. I see snarky response after snarky response that ignores how power and authority corrupt decision-making.
I hope we can all agree that the decision to bar someone from participating in important ways in society should not rest on the unsupervised whims of people in Bay Area meeting rooms.
It's becoming downright common for Uber drivers to outright admit they give 1 star ratings for non-cash-tippers.
But yes, I've anecdotally heard of ratings drop for women who typically are type-A chatty, but changed to quiet and withdrawn for a few weeks during major life events. Perhaps that came across as more surely, but just something as silly as someone perceiving a bad attitude from a rider can results in a lower rating score.
I've also talked to drivers who give poor ratings if they have to go well out of their way, and it ends up being a short ride. Sure, this really sucks for the driver - but is it the rider's fault at all? Other unpopular destinations get similar treatment (or so I've heard).
Maybe Uber shouldn't be making any decisions about users. Just present the rating to the driver pool and let drivers decide who they pick up and who they do not. It doesn't entirely solve the issue of "what is a justifiable reason for rating a rider (or driver) poorly?" but it makes it less catastrophic for users.
Uber isn't and shouldn't be the only option available to people. The laws that force every company to offer everything to everyone without question are almost always the markets with only one option.
All you're left with is a pseudo-market that offers few of the benefits of real private or public markets. A pretend public service with even less accountability and fewer people profiting from the industry.
We’re quickly heading to an Uber/Lyft duopoly. And they use similar ratings systems. Soooooo, I’m not sure what your point is. This isn’t a market, it’s a VC funded takeover of transportation.
https://driving-tests.org/confessions-of-an-uber-driver/
> Uber drivers have long been known to give passengers low ratings if they suspect a passenger is going to give them a low rating.
https://www.ridester.com/uber-passengers-ratings-sting/
So, yes, they don't base it off the actual review (that may be a service other than Uber that I'm recalling), but they'll often base your review off the review they expect you to give them.
Seems legit. /s
As with any rating system, there will be outlying bad raters. That's why it is normal for absolutely no one to have a perfect 5 star. It's really not a bid deal.
Yet people are being rated on their tips. People are being rated based on their expected ratings of the driver, regardless of their “success” as a driver.
It’s a big deal because it locks someone out of a system that has forced out its competition (illegally in some cases; such as in London).
I got a lot of crap online when raising questions about such ideas from folks I think of as technology fans who really embrace all the disruption and all these convenient things these companies promise etc. Fortunately I see less of that these days.
"problem users" doesn't necessarily mean what you think it means.
Just accept 2+2=5 and you won't have any issues!
I'm not going to make any comparisons to novels or anything. I'm just going to tell you you're acting like an asshole, and you should think about not doing that.
The problem with the 1,000,000 users is it becomes harder and harder to have informed people make reasoned decisions based on good information, so you end up relying on processes and proxies. Data and reports. And then you create rules like "whenever data point X reaches threshold Y action Z will be taken". And it is a good rule. Not a perfect rule, because perfect rules are really really hard. And maybe the rule can be gamed a bit. Griefed a bit. And this makes people unhappy and they start complaining, but there are so many of them and they were the ones breaking the rules anyway, and there really isn't time to look into all these complaints, and its impossible to figure out exactly what happened without reading through terabytes of logs so the rules are the rules and people just need to follow them. And so what if they just got a life ban because of a momentary lapse of reason or because an organized group filed a series of false complaints. Life is too short to coddle whiners and toxic people.
And then you are orwellian.
However, the pattern as it often plays out in the late 20th and early 21st century has a wrinkle: Private company lets competitors occupy distant 2nd and 3rd positions in order to deflect charges of monopoly. The dominant company might even buy stock in the distant competitors to help keep them afloat.
But the final result is beyond Orwellian.
In 2019, if someone gets banned from Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube, is there a viable mainstream alternative?
In eBay land, anything less than 5 stars is unacceptable, but for most normal people if you asked them they might say 3 stars is fair for a perfectly acceptable experience. If you get too many 3 star ratings from happy satisfied customers your average might drop from 4.9 to 4.7 and suddenly you're on thin ice and at risk of having your account closed.
Looking at this article it appears Uber is using a similar system. They require an average rating of 4.6-- meaning every 4 star review you get is actually a ding against you-- even though those 4 star reviews might've been perfectly happy riders who just felt in their minds that 4 = Good, 5 = Outstanding or something.
I used it mostly when you had positive, neutral, and negative. One might think that taking a few extra days to ship something or an item not being in quite as pristine condition as advertised was probably a good candidate for a neutral. Not bad/not perfect.
But that wasn't really the expectation. Neutral was more like "It took me two weeks of emailing but I finally heard back from the seller and they shipped the item which really wasn't as described but I just wanted the transaction done at that point" Negative was "They shipped me a box full of bricks and made me pay the postage."
There are cities without Uber. But I can't think of a city that has no taxis and only has Uber...
This is absurd. Even though I feel like some drivers deserve 3 or 4 stars I always give 5 because I had no idea what Uber does with these ratings. This confirms that I was doing the right thing. Just because I give 3 or 4 stars doesn't mean that I wouldn't want to ride with them again. They just aren't the best of the best.
I agree that the rating system is stupid, but also that there's a position of power that comes with being a rider. Assuming you had a safe, pleasant journey, it should be a 5 star journey. If the driver was objectively rude, the car dirty, or you felt unsafe, then obviously that's a good case to rate someone lower.
Same reason I always rate customer service reps a 5 (unless something really appalling happened). Most companies would prefer you not provide feedback at all than provide a lower 5 rating on a 1-5 scale.
Sure, you don't have any responsibility to understand what is going to happen with the ratings, but once you do, it seems overly punitive to give low ratings.
I recommend (to everyone interested) asking a few friends how they use star ratings, on Uber or anywhere else. My experience is that people say all of "I give three stars for average", "I give four stars for average because we're used to grade inflation", and "I give 5 stars unless there was a reason to subtract from it".
Given that, star ratings without explicit guidance on meaning are sort of a disaster. I'm not so much annoyed by which number Uber ties people's livelihoods to as by the whole decision to use a bad system when so many better ones are available.
The question any moral person asks themselves before they perform an action is “am I hurting someone by doing this”. Not “can I hurt people and then rules-lawyer the blame onto someone else”.
If I tell you to sing the National Anthem all day and all night, or else I'll kill my neighbor, would you be at fault if you opt not to and and as a result I choose to kill my neighbor?
Either Uber should review their baseline, and make it explicit that giving 4 or below will have severe consequences on the driver.
And uber has huge surplus of drivers - they are going to cull hard, and driver volume will still be high in their major profit centers.
Still no rating?
>made comments about random women
Those are cases where you should also leave a note about the driver in the app, in addition to your rating (or non-rating).
I absolutely despise when drivers ask me the directions when their GPS is telling them right in their face.
That being said I've only ever rated a driver low once, and that was because that person probably should have never had a license to begin with.
One time I contacted uber when my driver got out of the car and punched a pedestrian. I still didn’t rate the driver. I just reported the incident. I also ended my ride when that happened. Hopefully he was arrested, but I didn’t stick around to find out.
People say if it's a normal ride you should give 5* (and I do because I don't want to cause the driver problems if it's been fine), but you don't award a functional hotel room 5*, or award a restaurant 3 Michelin stars because their food was ok.
Same as with your mobile phone signal. 5 bars means anywhere from 50% to 100% good signal.
4 stars means 40%. One star 10%.
Although, if Uber really knows what they're doing, then they'll allow the buying and selling of accounts and then take a percentage of the sale.
If you're abusing a service and not following their general guidelines, they have every right to remove you.
If my taxi goes to where I want to go, doesn't take a silly detour for money, and doesn't physically assault me, I'm good.
Outside of that, who cares, really? Where and who are these princesses that really care if their cab driver is a 4.2 or 4.6?
I tend to rate basically everyone in service interactions 5 stars because the fact they even turn up to their minimum wage job is a colossal privilege for me to enjoy.
Like, would you rate your bus driver if you could? Your checkout operator? Why? What possible benefit do you derive from that to outweigh the embarassment (to _both_ parties)?
IMO the driver ratings make sense, and give the driver incentive to not take purposefully long routes, to not ignore your requests to adjust the A/C, to not talk on their phone, etc.
I have been in countless cab riders where it is clear the driver does not care at all what you think about the ride or the overall experience, and they know you can't really do anything about it (other than maybe not tip them).
But one thing I like about rating things is that it gives you a way to flag things that go badly. That's what sucked so much about taxis - you'd be ripped off, forced to pay cash, order a car only to wait (and then it not arrive), or wait out for 30 minutes to flag one down. Drivers would be rude, they'd talk on their phones, they'd drive dangerously. And you'd have to grin and bear it (I've experienced all of the above).
The correct way to deal with this is to have a 'report issue' button.
A drive is either acceptable or it's not. The whole gradient thing of rating a driver that didn't smile much 4 out of 5 is just absurd.
Given that, it just feels like a crummy affectation around a "report issue" button. If a driver was actually doing something dangerous, when would I ever want to handle that with one star instead of some actual context like "crossed three lanes with no signal then ran a red light"?
That's not a 5. I find Uber and Lyft drivers to be providing a great service at a fair price and most of them earn a 5 rating and a tip.
I've also had drivers who had absolutely no idea where they were going. To the point where they couldn't even follow the GPS reliably and I had to constantly tell them to get in a different lane or we were going to miss an exit and add significant time on to the trip. This was on the way to the airport, so it was kind of important to get there without a lot of detours. It turned out they didn't even live in my city and had not driven around here at all before.
I do think the 1-5 stars is stupid because people interpret that differently. If it's essentially 5 stars = ok, < 5 stars = "fire this driver", then they should just make it a thumbs up /thumbs down rating.
I wish Uber would get rid of their executives/employees that also dont meet this "Safety and Respect" policy they are imposing on users. The company has such a reputation of being a deplorable company this is a really two-faced policy. Do as I say, not as we do.
And its based on city, so if you get banned in your own city, could you get a ride in your own city? What about the opposite?
What happens when you go on holiday to X, but aren't aware of cultural norm Y. Are you then barred when you get home?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)
“The episode is set in a world where people can rate each other from one to five stars for every interaction they have, which can impact their socioeconomic status”
Anecdotally it looks like I have a 4.75 rider rating which I was hit by a low rating one time because the driver cancelled the ride probably because it wasn’t very far or some other reason. Extending this to real world penalties changes behavior. Ever do a customer interaction where the seller (say a car dealer or a mortgage broker) tells you a survey will be coming and to please rate then 5 stars?
Note that I only use Uber when traveling on business to large cities. So my policy described above always impacts me, but has never impacted any particular Uber driver more than once.
Someone said elsewhere in this thread that the driver only sees your rating after they've rated you. Although I'm not sure if it's possible for them to go back and change their rating of you if they see you've rated them poorly.
The rating is currency and is being treated as such.
In all honesty, there should be a "Flag bad ride" and nothing else. No positive ratings. If it was a good ride, you just do nothing. Your rating should be a rolling average of the number of flags you've gotten compared to the population with the more recent flags being weighted more.
That way if you're not flagged as often as most people, it won't matter. Your rating will take a temporary dip. If you're flagged more often than average, it means something.
And flagging a bad ride should be a fairly involved process to prevent people from just using it on a whim. In order to flag a ride, you should have to expend some effort for it.
If it has to happen, not sure which I like least - a system controlled by private companies or a system controlled by government.
The whole “ratings” aspect is preposterous. There’s no independent way to appeal a rating and get redress. It’s just as bad as 360 reviews—at least 360 reviews are a blunt tool to unload underperformers.
I think these app ratings systems are worse and should not be enough to ban a passenger.
That said, imagine if Walmart or Wholefoods banned customers because they had middling ratings. If they shoplift, vandalize, (is in Uber’s case vomitus, vandalizing, assault, etc.) They should follow with criminal complaints, etc.
My problem is with unilateral banning —not the banning in principle as there are some good cases for it, but they are rare.
Public transit doesn't ban you if you're loud or smelly. Private rideshare may. As rideshare takes over ridership from transit, mobility is removed from loud and smelly people.
Stars are subjective. Many people seem to think that "five stars" means a normal ride with nothing to complain about. Personally, I think a normal ride should be three stars—five stars should mean you went above and beyond in some way. And I'm not even sure what that would be in the context of a customer.
The last time me and my friends played a game of "share your Uber rating" on Facebook, my Uber rating was lower than nearly all my friends. Coincidence?
If you also your Uber driver they all have amazing stories of unreasonable riders.
(E.g. one 1 star and 9 5 star reviews)
Of course, it was definitely possible to get yourself banned for bad behavior before this, I've known people who were banned. It looks like the change here is allowing algorithmic bans based only on score. I can see why people object to that, although again I had always assumed it was the point of the scores.