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Comment by notyourwork | Hacker News Reader

I don't want to criticize you in particular but I have a problem with "always give 5 stars". Are you telling me that your average Uber ride is 100% perfect? I find that hard to believe, moreover basic distributions would find this improbable.

Sorry for ranting, I wish more people would give realistic ratings to things instead of starting with 100% perfect and decrementing for misses. It should start in the middle, 50% and go up or down based on experience. This would give a much better set of ratings that mean something.

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I agree with you that ratings should mean something. However, Uber requires an absolute minimum score of 3.8 for drivers to stay on the platform, and a 4.6 minimum for any area that has reasonable driver supply (eg: everywhere). This means every time you rate a driver a 4 it's effectively a statement that they should be fired.

Whether Uber or any other company does this doesn't change my premise. Uber is just like others further baking the problem and encouraging people to treat 100% as the status quo which means we have nothing to look forward to. I enjoy being pleasantly surprised when service is above average.

Its the same problem with the game industry has with reviews. If I were to market a game as "so and so" gave it 7/10 no one would care but if I say 9/10, 9.9/10 or better yet 10/10 than we have a marketing headline.

I wish more people would understand this.

Correct answer is stop using Uber if you don't like their rating system, not risking the livehood of people because it doesn't fit your mental mode of how the world should work.

We've traded one set of problems (with taxis) with another set of problems.

problems before: dirty taxis, disrespectful drivers, limited availability in some neighborhoods, often opaque and expensive pricing

problems now: we don't have enough flexibility to give 4 stars for a good but not perfect ride

> However, Uber requires an absolute minimum score of 3.8 for drivers to stay on the platform, and a 4.6 minimum for any area that has reasonable driver supply (eg: everywhere). This means every time you rate a driver a 4 it's effectively a statement that they should be fired.

No, it's a statement that the quality is what the customer would rate as a 4 on a 5 point scale. If Uber'a expectations of ratings are unreasonable based on the way it's customer base assigns ratings, then it is Uber, not customers, who should adjust.

Uber needs to replace its five star system with a binary rating system: "Good enough" or "Deserves to be fired". I mean that is basically what they have today, but they really should make it clearer

If a driver's average rating drops below around 4.5 they get kicked off. By design you can't give a driver less than 5 unless you want them to lose their job.

Why do you phrase this in a way that implies that is my problem? That is a mechanism Uber created because of the problem I originally called out.

If we didn't have this rating problem, 4.5 threshold would probably be much closer to the 50%.

It's your problem because of the knowledge you now have. 1-3 stars are masturbatory bullcrap, the actual rating system is binary.

Similar problem many professors face in schools with grade inflation. You are not holding any system accountable by using your own sensible scale instead of the one that matters, you're just punishing the student.

> Are you telling me that your average Uber ride is 100% perfect?

If you think of the service as a means of conveniently getting to a given destination and not as a performance in artfully begging for a good rating, then 100% should not be too unlikely.

Once you start giving extra points for nonessential extras, a driver who is polite and always on time will get a lower average rating than one who is 20% unreliable but hands out warm towels and free cake.

I am not expecting a performance but I do expect to be picked up where I dropped the pin, I expect the driver to follow traffic laws, I expect the driver to not make abrupt turns because of traffic. So yes most rides are not perfect, I don't know what city you use Uber in but the ones I do the drivers are far from skilled. Frankly, this is one reason why I feel safer in a taxi is the driver in my experience much more skilled at the job of driving.

The Uber driver who just moved to the city and doesn't know his way around without Google maps is going to have a difficult time in major metropolitans.

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