Reading the article, I'm recalling the "Social Credit" episode of Black Mirror. My my, it seems to be coming true --
> 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.
> 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?’
I used to buy vintage cameras on ebay (not so much lately--no more room) and one of the things you quickly realize is that a 'seller rating' of less than say 95% means 'avoid'. The way the ratings are calculated mean that if they're getting enough dings to bring the score down even a few points, they're doing something wrong.
I remember in the early days of ebay before they had the official rating system it became accepted that you had to leave a review containing A+++++++++++ if the shipper did an acceptable job because a grade of merely A+ meant that you got the thing you bought but something wasn't great about the experience and anything worse than that meant the seller was a scammer.
I find it depends, a small seller can end up with a low percentage because one unreasonable buyer leaves them a bad feedback, but for large sellers anything less than 98% or so is a big red flag.
A rating for Uber is silly. It's just a ride to get you to A to B, having a five star rating system is what creates a situation where leaving a 5 star review i the 'only acceptable rating'
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.
The variables in the quality of driving are far from being a few, and include:
- 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).
Agreed. Or have a function to report unacceptable behavior, but besides that no feedback is needed. I pretend this is the case. Never leave ratings anymore.
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.
Isn't that the way it typically works? If you rate an Uber less than five stars, the app will prompt you for a reason. This feedback system is one of the ways Uber surpasses traditional taxis in service quality.
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.
I think then this is an issue of UX/UI and the question should just be Were you satisfied with your journey yes or no? and then no, prompts further questions.
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.
The issue is there is a 1-5 rating system, but the system is actually binary. 5 stars means the ride was acceptable, everything else means the ride was unacceptable.
Which is a reasonable rating system, but presenting it as a 1-5 stars is confusing and dumb.
exactly, starred ratings are weird for both the passenger and driver
..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.
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.
Without thinking too deeply about the incentives and unintended consequences, it seems a better rating system would be "thumbs up" and "thumbs down", with the latter requiring some rationale (the text can be checked with AI to make sure it isn't just gibberish).
it would be even better if they stopped proactively pushing a rating prompt and defaulted to 'no rating' which means 'everything is fine'. provide the thumbs up/down in the app that people can use for the situations where it was noteworthy enough to go out of your way to register a vote.
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"?
Back when Foursquare was more popular, I always felt their ratings were much more accurate than Yelp’s. They use(d?) a ternary neutral/thumbs up/thumbs down.
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.
One of Uber's competitors have a 5 star system where 4 and 5 stars show you a few options below with the title "What did you like?". Those are optional. for 3 and 2 they will show "What was the issue?" and you have to write a shot message describing the issue. And for 1 they show no options but will call you and ask what was so terrible about your ride.
I agree with this, although I wouldn't bother with the rationale. It's either you had an overall good experience or an overall bad experience. I'd add a third option called "favorite" or "star" which you could you only give out to 10 drivers/restaurants/places at a time to highlight really exceptional experiences.
So the point of the author is that as a passenger, I should accept that the system is a weird binary system where 4 or less means "unsafe or should be fired"? Why can't 4 be "A to B without any issues" and 5 is "great conversation, spotlessly cleaned car, threw in an excellent restaurant recommendation when asked?"
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've noticed the same thing is happening with rider ratings. In forums like r/uberdrivers what the posters there perceive as a red flag rider rating has steadily gone up over the years. Several years ago they'd laugh at people below 4 stars. Now I wonder how many people see my 4.92 and think I'm a cretin.
I don't believe the author is asking for "acceptance". I think they're just notifying you that that is how the system works now. You may act as you see fit.
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.
There are lots of uber experiences that are less than 5-star but do not rise to this level.
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.
I went into a store this weekend, find my item walk up to the counter, the guy scans my item and I go to use my card, it prompts me to rate him out of 5 stars.
I often think that marketplace rating should work like this:
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.
> Every 3 rides, you get asked "Which one of the last 3 rides did you like the best?".
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.
One could say that a "rush hour ride" is a different service than a ride at a less crowded time.
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.
Or just "was this ride experience better or worse than your previous ride" for every ride apart from the first one you ever take. You could then use the Elo rating system to track driver scores.
When every transaction is rated, the buyer will still get nagged by the seller to give them the star.
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.
What if the only time I've ridden an Uber was in 2014? That's an actual example but even with 3 taxi/uber rides per year I probably would not remember.
that's in line with the past week elo everything ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36393406 ) submission. There are many statistical ways to improve the rating systems, but if you don't act and proactively filter bad actors, is not a zero sum game.
I favour taxis over Ubers these days because of the stupid "rider rating" system. There should be no "rider rating" system. Either I should be banned from the platform or not.
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?
Its similar to the option to tip being on everything now. Guy scans your soda at checkout, how much would you like to to tip? 20, 25 or 30%.
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.
I don't use these services a lot, but I mostly just refuse to rate at all, don't want to participate. I don't know if there are any consequences to me of refusing to rate? I think all of the apps let you skip it if you insist.
I don’t know about Uber specifically, but in my country, some food and grocery delivery apps pay their delivery agents more if they get a five star rating.
I'm not a psychologist, but I'm sure one can explain this insight:
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
I feel like a rating system encourages lots of unintended dimensions of ratings to come into play. Some people want engaging conversation between them and the driver. Others want absolute silence. It can also vary for passengers and drivers day-to-day and trip-to-trip. This could also lead to neurodiverse passengers and drivers receiving low scores inappropriately because of mismatched expectations on the social dimension of the trip.
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?
I have to disagree with this. In most cases I will say it is true.
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.
it's a pretty toxic thing to flirt with someone while they're "trapped" in your car. Especially if the passenger thinks they have to be polite because of certain power dynamics.
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.
What a patronizing attitude towards women - they are helpless perpetual children who lack the agency or emotional resillience to handle a driver who tells them they look nice and asks them out. I'll be sorely disappointed in myself if my daughter is triggered by a guy in an Uber flirting with her.
Boundaries are normal and healthy. If you’ve been convinced otherwise, you’ve been misled.
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.
I'm pretty sure the only reason my mom was in the hallway where she met my dad was to return to her apartment. Good thing my dad didn't follow your advice and started talking to her. If only people on dating sites and single bars dated, most of us would have never been born.
Attraction and flirting are natural and healthy expressions of human sexuality and not something to be ashamed of.
I recommend showing your mom the comment you wrote, and asking whether her circumstances were the same as those of the Uber driver in this scenario.
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.
This is a wild perspective. Even if it’s true among people you know, but being trapped in a vehicle with some random man you don’t know is not a fantasy for most women. If you think that is a good time to throw down some moves, you’ve been misled.
Properly done, flirting with customers can be fine. But most men don't know how to properly flirt.
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.
The idea of a belief spectrum quantified from (0 or) 1 to 5, but because of perception around binary consequences (employed or unemployed), the ratings follow suit.
I have opted out of all rating and feedback requests by default. I now just give them rarely, for things that are out of the ordinary. And by preference I use email and my own words, rather than a form. The constant pummeling of these requests has just gotten too much, a bit of a water torture.
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.
The Revel app (which is rolling out rideshare in NYC where all drivers are actual employees) has a rating system that’s explicitly labeled something like “Bad - Okay - Good - Great - Amazing”, where the default selected option is “Good”. I think it’s really nice because then it’s clear that most of your rides should be in the “Good” zone and the higher ratings are really for special cases. On the other hand the ratings are really for Revel - as a rider you can’t see your driver’s rating.
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 ;)
Obviously the title is very wrong. The author says so themselves - if you fear for your safety, then a rating below 5 is completely reasonable. Which for me, has happened more than I am comfortable with. I haven't even taken Uber that often - maybe 30 times in the last 10 years - but at least 3 of those times I can recall actually feeling unsafe by the driver's speeding, weaving in and out of traffic, or near misses with other vehicles.
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?
If you don't have many rides a single 1 star review can knock you down a lot.
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.
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.
The Uber app should ask the driver to rate the passenger before knowing whether they tipped. Otherwise it's just a rate of tipping which together with local expectations is a recipe for just making it useless. Do drivers really see tips before rating riders?
Passengers get rated on a lot of things but I think your willingness to tip is foremost, and then from there it's a lot of biases, racial, gender, etc. I've been hit on by a lot of drivers and I've wondered if politely rejecting their advances has caused me to have a lower score. 4.8 on Uber, and a 5.0 on Lyft. Go figure.
One I've seen brought up a lot in driver forums are smokers. So if you reek of smoke they'll ding you. Which makes sense I suppose because their complaint is that the smell lingers in the car and then *they* get dinged by the next rider
For any rating system, I tend to reserve the top-tier ranking for something that exceeds normal or reasonable expectations. So the average Uber trip gets 4 stars when I rate it. 4 means it met my expectations, nothing went wrong, but also nothing was beyond expectations.
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.
Your Uber rating habits are perhaps more "logical" than those of others, but they don't match the behavior of everyone else, so the actual effect of your rating is that you are punishing good drivers. An Uber driver will likely be banned from the platform if their rating drops below 4.6
This is one of the larger reasons why I will never again use Uber, and more generally is the main reason why I no longer give ratings or pay attention to ratings for anything.
They're no longer just worthless, they're actively harmful.
I fear the suggestion at the end of the article to protest the system by giving only 5 star reviews does nothing apart from increasing the rating inflation that it talked about earlier. You will never get 100% of people to join in this 5-star-or-bust activity so instead of 4.8 being the minimum acceptable "actually good" rating it'll be 4.85 or 4.9 or whatever. It just moves the threshold a bit but it doesn't change the fact that it's not a linear 1 to 5 rating system.
Uber made it a problem for themselves. If they used any sort of linear scale it could've been useful. I've never seen a driver with rating lower than 4. TBH, I'm not sure if I ever saw one lower than 4.7. What's the point of this rating scale? It's compressed to the point of being meaningless. Likewise, there are no way to get a rating better than the default 5. So there's no incentive for drivers to be better than average.
An Uber driver who drives like an LA TV police chase through traffic, then threatens my personal safety, kicks me out of their car while it's still moving, and slams the door by accelerating is probably not getting 5 stars from me. I'm probably calling Uber and the cops.
I have a single 4 star (passenger) rating. I don't know when I got it, but I think it happened when I was very drunk one time while abroad, so I probably earned it to. I personally always rate 5, unless there was something very wrong with the car or the driver.
I think a median rating of 5 stars makes sense for a taxi service. You want the rating system to be able to express varying levels of bad. There are many levels of bad outcomes for a car ride. There are not many ways to improve on the median experience.
The only acceptable rating to leave an Uber driver is the one the customer feels like leaving. Even if it's 1 star or three stars. The rating weeds out bad drivers and is there for drivers, and passengers.
If this is true, maybe they should change to a binary system. I rarely give five stars. I reserve those for truly exceptional service. Everyone else gets 2 (poor), 3 (average), or 4 (above average).
...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.
> 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.