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The Uber drivers I have asked have also all been very positive. I asked one whether he was dispatched by anyone else, and he said that he used to be, but no longer - now he was Uber-only and he was glad he could ditch the dispatcher model.

The guys that own their own cars are not Uber employees - they can sign up to be dispatched by traditional radios instead (or as well). So, from my sample in NYC, Uber is way better than existing models for the drivers.

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I used to talk to all my drivers about this, too - an easy conversation prompt to pass the time if nothing else. But while most spoke positively, I began to get the impression that they follow the basic rule of don't bad mouth your employer to customers. Pair that with the risk of saying the wrong things to a secretshopper-type riders, and it's become difficult for me to take Uber reviews from drivers at face value.

Definitely. But the thing that convinced me that this driver meant it was that he previously was dispatched by both radio and Uber, and then chose to go Uber-only. As a sample, it's prone to survivor bias, but it definitely argues that my particular driver wasn't just putting up a front.

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