Comment by o999 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by o999 | Hacker News Reader

I like how people in comments are keen to change the world, but I - more realisticly - only focus on gaming the system so I can actually save myself couple bucks right away.

I set pick up and destination, exit the app, open another rides app, wait few minutes for uber to notify me that the price went down.

I only give it initials (instead of full name) and phone number, not even my gender, I rarely rate drivers positively, if it is not a negative experience, I skip reviewing, so they don't know I "like" the service.

When it takes more than a minute to find a ride, I cancel the ride and choose the "others" option, as this is the de-facto the option for "I will just take a cab", so I get inserted on the "churn risk" list.

I use a virtual card that I some time leave empty so payment fail after the ride, and on the next ride I readjust my virtual card limit on the next ride and pay the last bill so I am added on the "poor and miserable riders" list.

I am well protected

> I like how people in comments are keen to change the world, but I - more realisticly - only focus on gaming the system so I can actually save myself couple bucks right away.

This type of attitude sometimes makes the world a worse place. If everyone has this attitude, the system can break down.

> I rarely rate drivers positively

Drivers live or die by their rating. Refusing to give good reviews harms the drivers who are already barely scraping by. This is a very good example of how you can cause real world harm with by trying to game the system for yourself.

Interesting take.

Assumes we all benefit from playing into the system Uber created.

Maybe true on a local maximum.

But is it true on the global one?

No one actually knows what the global maximum is, or how to get there, outside of any specifics that religion may or may not tell you.

A "global maximum" closely parallels the definition of faith. It's the maximal good for the maximal number of people, and a real destination for some (surely not all are worthy of it, as long as human evil exists). How we get there, what it is, who actually makes it there, on what basis, what's preventing its realization at present, how to overcome such obstacles --- these are the questions that religions (including secular humanism) answer.

"Drivers live or die by their rating" - really??? I have never given the drivers rating a moments thought. Do you seriously cancel rides because the driver doesn't have 5 stars??

> Do you seriously cancel rides ..

It's also possible that the algorithm behind the scenes allocates drivers to demand based on ( proximity AND driver rating ).

If so then lower ranked drivers would be 'starved' out by higher ranked drivers.

Yes, rating is used for prioritization when proximity is equalish

Drivers with below 4 star ratings used to get dropped from Uber and Lyft. Not sure how a non-rating affects their score, but I'd assume the worst.

A non rating doesn't directly affect their score. But if a driver doesn't get plenty of five star reviews, they'll get dropped from the app because there are always people who give bad reviews because they had a bad day.

If a driver's average rating falls below 4.6 Uber typically removes them from the platform. A rating of less than 5 stars is treated similarly to if a customer reported a driver for poor service.

Ahh, OK I had no idea that was a thing. I thought it was just for customer decisions.

I guarantee their algorithms factor in average number of riders who don’t rate anyone lol. Maybe they weight them. Maybe they grade everyone on a bell curve. Maybe they use it in C-suite meetings to determine strategies. I can just about guarantee they don’t ignore it, though.

They’re a tech company;a decent rating algorithm should be one of the most likely things for them to excel in, or they’d just lose to any company that does because all the good drivers they’re dropping are immediately signing up to work for a competing service.

tl;dr It is in ride-services’ best to retain good drivers, no?

In NYC at least, Uber has become the de facto way of getting a private driver to take you places.

Until that meaningfully changes I don’t think they care about anything but earnings.

Interestingly, that attitude is what allowed them to come in and replace yellow cabs as the de facto driver for hire option.

Some systems are worth breaking down. On a macro-level, I think it's safe to assume that drivers are already being maximally exploited by the algorithm.

> Drivers live or die by their rating. Refusing to give good reviews harms the drivers who are already barely scraping by.

I drive on Uber part-time. In my city at least, rating is not such a big deal. The vast vast majority of people give 5 stars ratings (i'm talking about 99% of ratings).

I assume there are some people who only give ratings when the service was exceptionally good or exceptionally bad, or would otherwise consider 3 stars as a fair rating for a normal experience. Let's call there honest raters. As a driver, i don't think honest raters can have such a big impact on me, because the platform is designed so that there's no preference to always match honest raters to some particular drivers. Their honest ratings will be spread more or less uniformly among drivers.

And, if we want to apply Kantian logic and think "but what would happen if everybody did the same?", well, Uber is a live system too: if more people would become honest raters, then the ceiling of what's the minimum average rating you need to have as a driver would be lowered accordingly. Uber needs drivers too. It needs to keep a healthy balance of available drivers and available passengers. If either of the two gets too low, if would lose the other part in short time.

> I drive on Uber part-time. In my city at least, rating is not such a big deal. The vast vast majority of people give 5 stars ratings (i'm talking about 99% of ratings).

Same here, and all that means the scale is different. 4.70 is I drive on Uber part-time. In my city at least, rating is not such a big deal. The vast vast majority of people give 5 stars ratings (i'm talking about 99% of ratings), 4.80 is bad, 4.90 is good, 4.95+ is very friendly. I no longer am assigned any drivers below 4.85 because I started consistently cancelling every driver I got below 4.8.

Super interesting, thank you. Isn't there some consequence for canceling?

I appreciate your input, thanks.

That may be the case but this can be seen as 'Hate the game not the player'. Just because folks are in this position doesn't mean you should be complicit in its continuation as it stands.

I mean I get it, you end up hurting those that have the least power. It is a rough predicament to be in.

> This type of attitude sometimes makes the world a worse place. If everyone has this attitude, the system can break down

Or: bad actors speed up the rate at which the system improves to not rely on the goodness of individuals in order to operate.

Or: systems that tolerate bad actors contribute to a society that tolerates bad actors, and therefore increases the number of bad actors.

> This is a very good example of how you can cause real world harm with by trying to game the system for yourself.

Isn't that the rule that Uber itself already imposes on its customers and drivers?

> This type of attitude sometimes makes the world a worse place. If everyone has this attitude, the system can break down.

Its just literally the attitude of uber itself, were not talking about some social security system

> This type of attitude sometimes makes the world a worse place. If everyone has this attitude, the system can break down.

Any system like this entails a set of individual incentives. If following those incentives would lead the system to break down, the system is already broken.

> Drivers live or die by their rating. Refusing to give good reviews harms the drivers who are already barely scraping by.

This is one of the two reasons why I don't use Uber. The rating thing amounts to emotional blackmail, and that's not a game I'm willing to play.

It also means that driver ratings are meaningless.

I recently got some help from my banker dealing with sorting out accounts following a death. When we finished she told me she'd appreciate a review on the survey I'd likely get, but that only 4s and 5s (or 9s-10s) count. In the end I didn't get a survey but it left a bit of a weird taste, I've worked with her for 8-10 years, she seems good at her job, and I've never really had any complaints.

Probably Net Promotor Score.

NPS is utter bullshit, and has been thoroughly debunked, yet it's so widespread...

> If everyone has this attitude, the system can break down.

Yes, that is why "I like how people [in comments] are keen to change the world", I don't want everyone to be as lazy as I am.

> Refusing to give good reviews harms the drivers who are already barely scraping by. This is a very good example of how you can cause real world harm with by trying to game the system for yourself.

No uber rider owe feedback at all, even if there is no gain of skipping it..

I would understand your argument if I were giving negative feedback on purpose for good drivers, which I consider a false testimony and a lie, but every user have all the right to skip reviewing, owing no more than the ride fees.

I'm not sure if any of this actually saves you money. If anything, it may drive the algorithm to pair you with less than stellar drivers. In a customer retention phase, which Uber is in right now, the algorithm should aim to pair good clients with good drivers and poor clients with poor drivers, just to protect the repeat business.

I'm convinced the person you're replying to is right. At my last job, all of us took separate Ubers every day. I started cancelling every driver below X rating. After a while, Ive ended up only being assigned drivers far above X, while my colleagues still got low rated drivers often enough (they never cancelled based on rating). My own rating wasn't higher than theirs, and I was a worse customer in that I used Uber less than they did.

I don't know if this saves you money, but if it is, you are certainly working pretty hard for it.

I do the same and it's really not more work. All the steps come rather smoothly when you have the goal in mind of not benefiting the app in any way.

Exactly

all steps, like .. fiddling with virtual cards, retrying transactions, occasionally cancelling when searching for a driver ... this seems like waay too much effort.

Negligible saving for one ride, but I rely on Uber as I have no car and riding in taxis in my city is sometimes horrible, so it adds up on the long-run.

Do you have info, anecdotal or otherwise, on how much you think you save per ride in total and relative amounts? That might sound like a lot, but really I'm just wondering if you can estimate "I think I save about $X dollars on a fare that would cost $Y dollars otherwise."

By leaving the app before booking, I often get 10%-20% off (it claims rates went low, of course it's just a retention discount), not sure about others.

It doesn't work everytime btw.

Yeah, and any individual vote doesn't make a difference, so why take the time to vote?

I don't know man... saving a few bucks on the average HN 300k+ salary doesn't make a difference, but let people have their principles. Isn't that the source of the original hacker mentality and the stuff we like to celebrate here?

>> I like how people in comments are keen to change the world, but I - more realisticly - only focus on...

> but let people have their principles.

I believe I did..?

You did, I was complimenting you and threading on magic_hamster

Whoops, gotta clean my glasses.

> saving a few bucks on the average HN 300k+ salary

I’m pretty sure there are plenty of Europeans/etc. here..

Wouldn’t / shouldn’t this heavily penalize you? Like, what I want to optimize for is that when there’s little Uber capacity and many requests, that I get prioritized and get put as close to the front of the queue as possible. Which is why I tend to stick to just one app (Uber), and try to have a high rating.

But idk if it’s doing anything. At least back when Uber had tiers (platinum / diamond) it was more obvious the perks you get with more use (like with airlines), but now that they dropped those I’m feeling less inclined to keep using just Uber vs a mix of all apps and picking cheapest.

The system cannot penalize the working party in the same way it penalizes the paying party, if you are an easy customer whi never complain, always seem satisfied, would ride anyway no matter how high is the current rate, we might as well assign you any driver.

If you are a difficult customer who is rarely satisfied and complain of most inconveniences, you will get the better drivers.

Because simply, the algorthm is prioritizing sales, not nice and chill riders.

> When it takes more than a minute to find a ride, I cancel the ride and choose the "others" option, as this is the de-facto the option for "I will just take a cab", so I get inserted on the "churn risk" list.

I don't live in the US, and over here a driver rating below 4.8 guarantees you a rollercoaster ride by an angry man. I've cancelled enough times straight after being assigned such a driver that I now only get drivers with near-perfect ratings. Doesn't take any longer either.

It's sad that it's come to this, but you've really got to make the algorithm work for you.

I'm not in the US, and over here, any driver with a rating unf

I like to imagine you were in an uber paired with a 4.6 driver and the ride ended poorly with the unfinished sentence at the end of your reply.

> I set pick up and destination, exit the app, open another rides app, wait few minutes for uber to notify me that the price went down.

Just tried this, didn't get any notification.

It is a heuristic, it doesn't work 100% of times for me.

I also don't know if ithas other factors, like region, number of rides, etc..

Thank you for these tips.

Your cynicism is commendable.

thanks!

I do similar to you. I wonder if not rating is limiting your gains relative to giving (gasps) four or three star ratings.

I work on freelancing platforms, I know how harmful is it for me to get a 4.9/5 star rating.

I would prefer not to harm the driver, unless he was a dick or was driving a garbage can, I would then rate it 1-star with a clear conscience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com