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Comment by V-2 | Hacker News Reader

The thing that annoys me with Uber is that one common (at least where I'm located) misbehaviour doesn't get penalized with their rating system at all... You find a ride, but the guy doesn't even start the car in 10 minutes. Then they simply cancel it, and now you're late.

Besides, I don't want to be connected again to someone I ranked negatively once (even if other people gave them 5 stars). I don't think such blacklisting - even in mild form, eg. with some sort of expiration period - is implemented. [EDIT: apparently it is, although the app never explicitly states that].

This is to say that inflation isn't the only, or even main inefficiency of Uber's system; from my perspective.

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This is an ENORMOUS problem in Kenya. Many drivers do this to "protest" Uber as well. Some of the drivers will accept the fare and then just not come if you're paying by credit card.

I would happily pay the minimum fare to give these drivers a 1 star review.

Recently spent a few weeks in Nairobi, drivers accepting the ride and then spending 10+ minutes parked a few hundred meters down the road seem quite common. Could be misaligned incentives, the cancelation fee is typically half that of a ride within downtown Nairobi. Also my rating took a massive hit, dropped down from 4.8x to 4.6x! over nearly 40 rides. I did occasionally tip for great service, but also encountered some fairly obvious cases of account sharing by drivers, and downright dangerous driving.

I think it is only fair. These drivers had reasonably good jobs until Uber came along and took part of their income.

So it's like protesting against eBay by tricking ordinary people into putting orders you have no intention of ever shipping?

Just because someone has a beef with Uber doesn't mean it's a good excuse for making me late by trolling me into a transaction they are not willing to fulfill to begin with. I'm not Uber. It's like getting a job at McDonald's and sabotaging from the inside (because they made your hot-dog stand go bust).

If that's the level of social ethics they demonstrated at their prior reasonably good jobs, I'm not too surprised about their losing them.

I don't think that's reasonable. Stuff like this (delaying people) happens with strikes all the time. Besides, Uber has a history of ignoring laws and regulations themselves.

These people are being sent into a race to the bottom by an outsider. An outsider who just happened to have attracted a big pile of money in a faraway country.

> Stuff like this (delaying people) happens with strikes all the time.

It's not the same thing at all. Strikes may delay people, and they do, but they don't involve deception.

Strikes, especially, though not exclusively, transport strikes, are announced - and announced in advance.

Even if - say - your local surgery strikes, surely they won't book you an appointment, then trick you into sitting in their waiting room, while noone is actually going to see you.

The comparison to surgeons is not adequate. We're talking here about people with little savings, and little to no other job opportunities.

The rebellious acts of these people and the collateral inconveniences they cause are rather small compared to the moral injustice that is imposed on these people.

And yes, you, as a client of Uber are also guilty to some extent.

Perhaps ask yourself this question: what amount of money would be necessary to put me out of business? Imagine that someone stands up and brings together a bunch of VCs and collects that money. Imagine that you have invested a lot in your current business, and you have nowhere to go if you lost that business. That's the situation we're talking about here.

> The comparison to surgeons is not adequate

I meant a surgery as in primary care physicians or dentists, not surgeons. It could be a barber though, or whatever really. You're missing the point I laid out explicitly - strikes aren't based on deception, and are announced.

And it's for a reason: to maximize the impact it has on the employer, while at the same time minimizing it for the "guilty to some extent" average people. Which is the exact opposite of the strategy you described.

Deception is required when you're fighting against an adversary (Uber) where there is a drastic power imbalance.

Uber does not fight fare, so therefore, neither should those fighting against them.

Used to work at Uber years ago.

1. Uber keeps track of driver's cancellation rates, and if they do it enough, they'll receive notices to timeouts to deactivation.

2. If you rate a driver/rider 3 stars or less, you will never be matched with them ever again.

That’s a shame, 3 stars is my default (would be 2.5 but can’t select that), but as far as I’m concerned that means “got me to my destination with no notable positivity or negativity to the ride”.

Know that Uber has a pretty high threshold (I believe it's 4.8) that drivers have to stay above to not get kicked off of the platform. While you may not agree with how they're doing this keep in mind that when you rate someone below a 5, or maybe a 4 given that it won't move things as much, you're in a sense voting for that driver to no longer remain in the system.

I have heard that, but only through rumour, I do not know for sure. I think I've typically rated 4 stars in the past (but had journey worth 2-3 in my mind).

I think I'd rather just not rate at all, having to take into account rumours, how other people rate, how I think Uber might use the data, etc, is just too much to bother with.

They should probably adopt a thumbs up/down rating system like Netflix switched to. It' much more obvious what the rating should be, allows them to remove bad drivers from the system, etc.

One would hope Uber is sophisticated enough to weight ratings with respect to deviation from a user’s average rating, but it does seem likely the 3-star rater has unintentionally sabotaged at least one driver’s rating.

Uber doesn’t, at least when I worked there.

Yeah, apparently not according to someone I talked to after I made this comment. It’s too bad that the drivers are suffering due to a misunderstanding of an opaque and arbitrary system.

Ad. 1. It could still be tied to the rating system though.

Ad. 2. Thanks for the clarification!

Yeah, I want to 1/0 star the drivers who cancel my ride (after more than about 2 minutes), especially the ones I call to confirm then cancel my ride.

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