The only acceptable rating to leave an Uber driver is 5 stars
oversharing.substack.com
oversharing.substack.com
> Five stars is good. Everything else is bad. For riders, a couple bad ratings don’t mean that much, but for drivers they could be the difference between maintaining access to the app and being deactivated—gig-speak for being suspended or fired.
I'm only being a _little_ dramatic. I swear.
> Sometimes, she gets worried about picking up passengers rated less than 4.8. Like a 4.79 is really low. I wonder, ‘Do I have to fear for my life with this person?’
"Shipping came so fast I had to duck!!!"
"If I were locked in prison this seller could be my bunk mate!"
I think maybe it should just be a few simple questions that are yes or no, based on did the driver follow procedures, get you to your location, provide a suitable vehicle etc. Maybe these questions are randomised so you only get asked one or two, to make the survey quick with riders that get a low yes rate on a certain question, having that question asked to more future riders to rank if it really is an issue or not, the app could even let you filter out riders based on certain feedback criteria if something is important to you.
If yes, then do nothing else, if No, then allow an option to provide feedback that can be monitored in a data driven way so you can see any potential drivers that have issues, else ignore.
..but they’re also fast to leave and well understood which i’m sure is why they’re used. if you started asking questions instead folks will stop providing feedback. maybe they could incentivize the behaviors through small credits for future rides or something.
Are they? There's not a universal definition of what any of the discrete star ratings mean.
I think they're clearly not well-understood. It's not obvious that a 1-5 scale is actually meant to be a binary one.
I was actually scolded by an Uber driver here on HN when I commented that I considered 3 stars to mean "average and acceptable". I was accused of destroying the livelihood of drivers. His perspective was that the only time you shouldn't leave a five star rating is if something was wrong with the ride.
The problem was that nobody bothered to tell me that the 1-5 scale wasn't intended to be a 1-5 scale.
That's what the stars are for.
> I think maybe it should just be a few simple questions
Many people don't have the patience for one question, and you're going to ask multiple?
If the car is exceptionally unclean (gross like hell) then a perfect rating isn't justified. However, it's generally advised to give a rating below five stars only for significant issues. If the driver gets you from point A to point B, isn't a five-star rating warranted?
Some people may not understand this, but that's the structure of the system.
The confusion comes from it being different systems for different things, having a yes or no, would make it clear that is what it is. You rate a movie out of five, four out of five would be a pretty decent movie, but in your example it would mean that something majorish was wrong, considering completing the most basic task is 5 out of 5.
Which is a reasonable rating system, but presenting it as a 1-5 stars is confusing and dumb.
In my city, anyway, Uber does not surpass traditional taxis on service quality.
- driving aggressively/dangerously/poorly - the above includes not being focused on driving (eg. talking on the phone) - reacting angrily to other drivers - driving illegally - allowing a ride without safety measures (eg. child seat), which is also a case of driving illegally - not replying to requests (messages) at all before actually starting the ride (which is important in case of particular needs), leaving the passenger without answer until the vehicle arrives
All of those are important, and they definitely need to be all provided - as a matter of fact, at least some are provided in case of ratings below 5.
Uber's star rating has a sensible design - anything below 5 requires the user to explain why. However, I believe that this skews passenger ratings toward 5 stars, even if just for the effort required, or even worse, because of the perception of hostility (AFAIK, ratings are given immediately, and the driver can get an idea of the rating of the passenger).
That is not a sensible design at all. That's effectively demanding that all reviews be 5 stars.
Not sure of their algorithm to generate a score of 1-10 – it’s possible it used more information than just the ternary rating — but their ratings could vary dramatically from sites like Yelp that used the usual 1-5 stars, and seemed to track much more closely to the actual quality of restaurants.
and it might be better to drop the thumbs-up option as well. the rating ecosystems have evolved to a point where the stars aren't a bipolar rating scale from bad->acceptable->great but rather a unipolar scale from bad->acceptable. there's a good chance that the same would happen with thumbs up/down, so why not just jump to the inveitable endpoint of "ratings are only used to report adverse events"?
That sounds like a very effective way of getting riders to never leave a 1 under any circumstance.
But really the whole idea of rating every ride on a single measurement is crap. Flagging someone as dangerous or unfit as a driver shouldn't be part of a mandatory rating process it should just be flagging just like flagging a message on HN. Apart from the obvious safety flagging if the car lacks a seatbelt or the driver keeps looking on TV series on his phone the whole ride (Something I experienced), in terms of finding good/bad drivers, why not just ask some more specific questions. Did you find the driver likable? too quiet? too talkative? Was the car dirty? clean? comfortable? And even more importantly, look at tips. I rarely tip drivers (I'm not in the US so I rarely tip anywhere) but who gets tips should be a better tell of a good experience than any grade. But perhaps in the US where people mechanically tip 20% at restaurants and it's more an expected part of waiter pay than a perk for excellent service, that wouldn't work for Uber?
I think there's a touch of satire to the whole thing in the tone that you're picking up on. This article wasn't a celebration of this fact by any means, merely an observation of it.
I had a driver in LA who was both a terrible driver and terrified of freeways. With 3 near-misses and the bad route, it took 50 min to go somewhere that would otherwise take 15, making me late for a meeting (the LA area has some communities that are physically near each other, but separated by hills/mountains that are otherwise basically impossible to get around). 1 star seems merited for someone who literally can't do the job.
> *, **, ***, ****: This person is a danger to me, themself, and others and should be removed from the service
Sure sounds like your exact experience falls under that second group!
And I quote:
> *****: This person deserves to have access to this platform and the ability to earn a living through it
> *, **, ***, ****: This person is a danger to me, themself, and others and should be removed from the service
Sure sounds like your exact experience falls under that second group!
I’ve taken 600+ rides and gave all 5-stars except for a single dangerous ride.
Maybe I’m not as exacting as your average HN commenter, but I’d still describe my stance as “always give 5 stars” despite the outlier.
What does a 1 star item scanning look like?
A self-checkout machine.
Every 3 rides, you get asked "Which one of the last 3 rides did you like the best?".
Then the driver you select gets 1 star. So an average driver would get 0.3 stars per ride. For display purposes, this can be normalized to whatever scale is most comfortable for users.
This should completely get rid of the problems with the popular "rate every seller right after the transaction" approach.
My thought behind giving one star to one of the last 3 rides is that the seller does not know when the buyer will give out that star. It might be 3 months in the future. So it seems futile to nag the buyer about what they will do then.
Calculating an ELO value should also be possible for more than two players.
You could reduce bias towards the most recent trip by adding a delay before asking.
Note that this is a variation of stack ranking, which has incentives for the usual sorts of manipulation like avoiding "difficult" times like rush hour.
Hotels in a small town might have better reviews than hotels in New York. But if you want to stay in NY, you compare between the hotels there. So the hotels in the small town do not have a benefit of their "manipulation" to offer rooms in a less crowded city.
I'm at the pickup location when the driver gets there. I don't ask for detours. I should have a perfect 5, yet I don't, why? Did I ask for routes that the drivers disliked? Did I not make conversation? Something else? Is it because in the US, everything is 5* but I took too many rides in Europe, where maybe people don't 5* by default?
Between the possibility of paying for a service and not being able to relax with the "fear" of getting my rating lowered and then getting worse service in the future vs just getting into a cab, guess which one is easier and more relaxing for me?
Oh tipped on the first order but forgot to add a cookie for your kid? Thats a second tip.
Everything requires some sort of rating or payment now. I have a guy that calls me once a week to update me on an order thats 2 months late. He asks me to rate him after every call. I hang up each time though, its like a 10 question survey, its crazy, takes longer than the update call.
Whenever I'm rating an Uber (or any service), the number of stars I leave is often more correlated with how I feel at that particular moment (regardless of the service) and less with the service itself
If I'm having a good day or in a particularly good mood, everything is 5 stars, regardless of the service... and vice-versa
All of this has nothing to do with what the ratings should focus on: did the driver do the job of getting from A to B well (and safely)? Was the passenger respective of the driver's time and space?
But as people here should know, people have had issues with Uber Drivers and I am sure there are scales of acceptable behavior.
Not being a woman, I can see were some divers could somewhat hit (even unconsciously) upon some women. In many cases it is not be worthy of reporting, but I believe when that happens I would say a less than 5 should be selected.
First, they confuse flirting with "hitting on". Those are two different things. But the main thing about flirting is that you sneak up on it. You start with interactions that are friendly and 99% innocent. The sort that will not offend or threaten anybody. If you get responses in kind, you gradually escalate. If you don't, or if they stop, then you stop as well.
In a way, flirting is more like a dance. If your partner isn't dancing with you, you need to stop doing it with them.
of course people should be allowed to flirt with each other but from what I've heard from female friends - do it in a bar or public, leisurely places. Not inside of an Uber etc.'
And especially if the passenger also doesn't show any special interest.
YMMV I guess. And it's a touchy topic anyways, I know more guys than I expected who just don't think that cat-calling and "no is not an answer"-flirting is pretty messed up, most of the times. And proceed to call me a white-knight snowflake when I explain my viewpoint.
Unless she initiates the flirting, and does so enthusiastically, an Uber driver should assume that a female passenger is in the vehicle because she needs transportation, not a date.
Attraction and flirting are natural and healthy expressions of human sexuality and not something to be ashamed of.
There’s an ocean of difference between being ashamed to feel attraction, vs. refraining from acting on that attraction because it’s neither the time nor the place to do otherwise. The fact that so many men can’t tell the difference is the reason why it’s better for the Uber driver to err on the side of caution.
Feeling an attraction to someone does not, by itself, give a person license to act on that attraction. The world, and the people in it, have agency as separate human beings. They don’t exist merely as a repository for men’s feelings.
My eyes were opened by a company that actually offered to pay me for the feedback. I bought a scanner from Raven, and they contacted me and offered $20 for a short interview about my experience with it. How extraordinary, to actually offer to pay me for my time! I accepted their offer and tried to give good value for it. Now all of the others who request my time in return for nothing just seem like a poor deal. No, thanks, I don't feel that I owe you my time to review your product in return for a purchase, even 30 seconds of it.
Professionally, I feel I'm fighting against the corporate oligarchy when I rate all workers (telecom customer service reps, Microsoft support personnel) as five stars irrespective of how I actually felt about the service. I get paid the same at my job regardless, so it seems a waste to not be collaborative.
Recreationally, maybe it's an American thing. Our culture is one of generosity in spite of (not necessarily because of) the experience. I'll tip decent at a restaurant even if the food wasn't great or the service was slow. Granted, I might never go back, but if I'm there, I'm there to have a good experience and to be a good patron. Something would have to be VERY wrong for me to change course.
I don't use gig apps like Doordash or Uber often. I Uber'd once in an emergency and rating the driver was the last thing on my mind. He got 5 stars of course, but he always would have, unless I somehow never made it to my destination.
When interacting with large (or even small) businesses, gratuity items are one of the few things I as a customer have complete power over. For meals, I've already factored the tip into the cost so it's no sweat. For apps, the decision is even easier. One tap on the 5-star button and I can increase the level at which Uber values this non-employee? Easy.
Maybe it comes from the bad old days of raiding Internet polls and intentionally trying to disrupt corporate properties online, but I approach it from the mindset of "how much fun can I have with this?" and always using the highest rating seems the most amusing to me. Sometimes it's legitimate, other times it's more rueful, but it is always good-faith patronage in my opinion.
Somebody mentioned an Uber driver who crashed his car (hopefully not at-fault). I assume they didn't crash on purpose, so we know that guy was having a supremely shitty day. Yeah, I'd probably rate them 5 stars just for the hell of it. It had to have been the most memorable Uber ride ever. Maybe that's not worth much, but it's also not incentive to actively work against your fellow man on behalf of a corporation.
If corps want to farm out KPI work to the customer, I'll gladly oblige, but I'm going to mess with your stats for my trouble ;)
I do agree with the idea that it is a binary, though. Uber and other platforms should get rid of star rating systems altogether because it just breeds confusion. Some people (perhaps most) do indeed view it as a binary. But then there are people or situations where you find yourself wanting to rate a 3 or a 4 because the situation wasn't the worst experience of your life, but it was rather unpleasant for some reason.
Just ask people if they were satisfied or not, or if looking for something more, ask specific questions. Was the car clean? Did the driver follow the route they were given? Did the driver obey traffic laws? Was the radio too loud? Was the driver talking on the phone? These questions are easy to answer and give more information than a star rating.
The real problem with Uber's ratings is that drivers don't get one at all if the rider doesn't submit one. The overall rating is for the last 500 ratings - not rides. Only about 50-60% of riders rate drivers. This means that if you leave a driver less than five stars, it could take six to nine months (depending on how often they driver) for that rating to "fall off".
Unlike Uber, Lyft's rating is based on the last 100 rides. This means the Lyft driver gets five stars if you forget to rate them. If you rate a Lyft driver less than five stars, the rating will fall off in a few weeks compared to many months for Uber. Also, Lyft drops the lowest score. Uber doesn't.
AND, the rating button on the Uber app is at the BOTTOM of the screen where everyone's palm hits when selecting a tip at the top. Accidental one-star ratings happen and those suckers don't come off for a LONG time.
In conclusion, Uber is too strict and Lyft is too lenient.
I have never had a problematic ride, i'm always waiting exactly where I summon the Uber to. Not once have I made an Uber wait for me. I sit in the back and don't say a word unless spoken to.. is that what i'm doing wrong?
My country rates differently and I've heard stories from my countrymen of difficulty getting an Uber when visiting the USA since not everyone in Australia gives 5 stars.
Also, I lurk in r/uberdrivers and one thing I've found is that a) some drivers are just jerks and 1 star at the drop of a hat, and b) some of it seems regional as well in that some countries/areas are more likely to use the 2-4 star options for minor things.
IIRC Lyft only looks back over the last 100 rides, which allows old ratings to cycle out. I know I've only been dinged once on Uber in the last several years but the rating is still held down by some old dings in the early teens.
5 stars is basically perfection, and it is silly to expect perfection as the standard experience.
It is also difficult to roll up the entire trip experience to a single rating. A seamless trip in a car that should have been vacuumed, and the driver is wearing enough cologne for an entire basketball team, is not a 5 star experience. But it's also not the end of the world. It's about what I expect from a gig worker. 4 stars. Would ride again.
The whole thing is just BS. Why even have a sliding scale rating system?
This is one of the larger issues that got me to just stop using Uber entirely.
They're no longer just worthless, they're actively harmful.
I'm not going to give a driver that went on a tirade over me telling them to wear a seat belt five stars.
It goes both ways, though. If I'm being a subpar rider, then I should get dinged.
...which makes me think that Uber ratings may have less to do with the driver and more to do with the person giving the rating. I, for one, struggle giving people a bad review knowing that their livelihood depends on it — it's either 5 stars or crickets.