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Don't Sass Your Uber Driver - He's Rating You Too
HughPickens.com writes David Streitfeld reports at the NYT that people routinely use the Internet to review services from plumbers to hairdressers, but now the tables are turned as companies like Uber are rating their customers, and shunning those who do not make the grade. "An Uber trip should be a good experience for drivers too," says an Uber blog post. "Drivers shouldn't have to deal with aggressive, violent, or disrespectful riders. If a rider exhibits disrespectful, threatening, or unsafe behavior, they, too, may no longer be able to use the service." It does not seem to take much to annoy some Uber drivers. On one online forum, an anonymous driver said he gave poor reviews to "people who are generally negative and would tend to bring down my mood (or anyone around them)." Another was cavalier about the process: "1 star for passengers does not do them any harm. Sensible drivers won't pick them up, but so what?" In response, some consumers are becoming more polite and prompt. "The knowledge that they may be rated is also encouraging people to submit more upbeat reviews themselves, even if the experience was less than stellar," writes Streitfeld. "When services choose whom to serve, no one wants to be labeled difficult."
Simple rule to follow...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Between the liability/risk issues of potentially not having commercial insurance, the looming threat of municipal regulation, the increasing prices, and now the disclosure that some drivers may be just as petty as riders, it sounds to me like these ride-sharing companies are eating their own. Makes me question how long-term-stable the business model is.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Geez, can't any of you people LISTEN??
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
X may rate Y, if and only if X is paying Y. If these ubercruisers don't like it they can get a proper job like everyone else.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Seems like a mixed bag to me. On the upside if it motivates customers to be on their best behaviour; to be polite, prompt, etc. That's only a good thing.
On the other hand, if its just creating a circle jerk of good reviews that's not doing the system any good.
Driver only ran over one child; and the odor in the vehicle was less rank than the vehicles state of cleanliness would have suggested it would be. Could not hear radio over soothing rattles and squeaks. Would ride again! 10/10. A+++++
I think you put a "t" where the "p" is supposed to go!
He's rating your poo?
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
That's what she said.
I think Comcast has prior art here. Such as the story the other day of a Comcast rep changing a customer's first name to "Asshole". The significance is that Comcast can get away with it. They're part of a monopoly or equally bad duopoly in many of the areas they serve. Uber is not. A company that denigrates its customers isn't going to be able to keep its customers, and that opens the door for another competitor to step in.
> "The knowledge that they may be rated is also encouraging people to submit more upbeat reviews themselves, even if the experience was less than stellar,"
Ebay had the same problem with sellers threatening to give buyers crappy feedback ratings if they weren't first given a perfect rating. Eventually ebay changed their system so sellers could not rate buyers. That's imperfect too, but seems to be less imperfect than the previous iteration. I have no opinion as to whether a similar change would be a good thing for Uber, I don't use their service.
It's been this way basically since the beginning. I've had several drivers comment on my high rating (I'm pretty much a solid 5) despite many, many trips. I try to be pleasant, not keep the driver waiting, not make a mess, etc.
Uber was a disruptive (read: sketcky) concept to begin with. Several cases of assault by drivers and even a rape in india are documented occurances in the Uber ecosystem that seem to be shrugged off by the company as "isolated incidents." And since everyones an independent contractor in Uber theyre fairly insulated against things like state or federal investigations into any problems. Then theres surge pricing, which is the combination of words that come out of a rich mans cocksucker when they mean to say price gouging. Basically, its unregulated and the fruits of such deregulation cut both ways. Uber black is predicated upon the deceptive idea that people in very nice cars would like to play taxi, whereas in the real world their time is worth far more than an uber pittance. In a regulated taxi service you have rules and regulations to adhere to in order to maintain your taxi cab license, so you follow those rules.
In Uber, there is no palpable consequence for driving a family of 4 to a corn field instead of Disney land because once hes finished his negative review of you, you're now stranded somewhere without a taxi and locked out of uber.
Good people go to bed earlier.
sorry but Uber seems to have a higher share of body odor drivers than regular taxi companies.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I can't remember exactly how the Uber review process worked but I THINK it was like the AirBnB system where host and guest could not see each others reviews/ratings until both had finished.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So, first Uber thinks they're exempt from the laws, and now they expect their customers to fawn over them to protect their fucking fragile egos?
These guys sound like uber assholes.
Sorry, but nothing I've ever heard about this company makes me think I'd ever want to have anything to do with them.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Corporate-controlled review mechanisms are prone to manipulations.
BBB rated Uber an F.
That's better.
AirB&B faces a similar issue where they need to have service providers and guess rate each other.
What Air B&B does to prevent people leaving less than honest reviews out of fear, is to have both sides finish rating the other before they can see what each other left for feedback.
That way you can leave an honest review without fear of getting dinged.
The summary tries to cast a lot of shade on Uber for allowing this but honestly doesn't this put them 1000 years ahead of the cab industry where you cannot even see ratings for cab drivers AT ALL?
If you really want to imagine future issues, think of this - an obnoxious rider of the future who only cab companies will serve. Can you not imagine some kind of law passed requiring a driver of any service to pick up even the most threatening person for the sake of "fairness"...
Should it be possible that a person annoying or violent enough cannot get cab service at all? Or is cab service a right...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I can see how this will allow small, petty drivers to possibly ban passengers they don't like, for any stupid reason. Perhaps someone appears to have more money and better looks, or a hot girlfriend, or maybe someone declines a proposition from an eager driver. What could go wrong?
This could help cut down on bad and rude customers. Nevertheless, can customers view their own ratings? Are they able to dispute bad ratings? What if someone essentially gets blacklisted from the service due to false ratings?
I can't help but wonder how long it will take the less savory drivers to develop code words for the following:
"Too black."
"Too Jewish."
"Lives in a neighborhood that's too black."
"Too black, and was rude when I called him a nigger and accused him of trying to carjack me because he wouldn't give me a tip of ten times the fare."
Uber is about a hundred different kinds of lawsuits that have found a place to happen.
Now, it's 101.
Like retail. I think everyone here as encountered at least one of those individuals where you start being ashamed that you have to share a queue with them, let alone a country. The kind that thinks their 2 bucks 50 purchase entitled them to being a total asshole to the poor guy working there. Aka the "I'm a paying customer asshole".
How much I'd love to rate these people in hopes they will never ever clog the line I'm in and make me wait for half an hour because the cashier can't honor their expired coupon that could have saved them half a cent.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If customer A consistently gives lower-than-average ratings, scale their reviews upward to that a "3" from them is a "5" from someone else. If they consistently give "5" rating but give a "1" to a particular driver, then pay attention to that deviation.
Same for drivers: if B frequently gives "1" ratings to passengers, then that's a roundabout way of saying that B is a difficult jerk and you can ignore those.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Rate jokes aren't funny.
"Attractive female customer did not respond well to aggressive sexual advances" - Uber Driver #756234
A lot of economists view and post on this board, so maybe one of them could explain something to me.
The libertarian view would seem to apply here: a capitalistic system taken out of the free-market model and run by well-meaning regulation to prevent certain bad practices. Taxi rides must be regulated by government, lest the rides become unsavory, price gouging, and unsafe. Taxi rides are considered a necessary infrastructure, and thus a natural monopoly.
(And to be clear, having safe, reliable transportation in a city brings a lot of benefits: tourism, visiting businessmen, and so on.)
Despite the well-meaning reasons for all this, the taxi medallion system does not live up to it's purported goals. Taxi rides are the subject of satire, sarcasm, and mockery.
Here's a typical first-hand report.
Taxi medallions sell for multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. The money is used to fund the regulatory system surrounding taxis, and one would *suppose* that with this much money available that there would be a lot of infrastructure keeping things clean, safe, and reliable.
And yet, taxis are neither clean, safe, nor reliable. Here's a series of articles from Boston on the situation. From those articles:
[...] Passengers hurt in accidents often run into denial and evasion by poorly insured firms
[...] fleet owners get rich, drivers are frequently fleeced, and the city does little about it
It's abundantly clear that the government-regulated, natural monopoly solution simply *doesn't work*.
So here's my question: It would seem on first reading that the Libertarian view, of "remove regulation and let the free market decide" is the better solution. We have two models both active in the same market (taxi medallions with regulation, versus app-driven Uber) and it would appear that the Libertarian model is better.
Why is the Libertarian view on this particular narrow situation not the correct view?
Just you wait, Uber, until a year later it turns out, your drivers have blacklisted a "disproportionally" large share of some minority — sexual, racial, or religious. Let's see, if having Obama's top political adviser in employ will help you then...
Why should not a business-owner — whatever their business may be — be free to refuse to do business with anyone they find disagreeable, and for whatever reason?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The link above, "multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars", was somehow replaced. It should point to the Chicago schedule of Taxi medallion transfer fees.
Transfer fees are less than the auction costs of a medallion, but are still in the 6-figure range.
The Uber driver's have a solution to rude passengers. Pull the car over and kick the jerk out.
I'm not an Uber driver, but several times when I've been waiting by the curb to pick up my wife at her office, Uber passengers have jumped in my back seat. Where do I submit my reviews of them?
-Tom Duff
Inconsistent service. Conventional options such as cars, taxis, buses, subways, and light rail offer consistent service in ways that Uber, Lyft, and other variable taxi-like services can't offer.
Whether it is the surge pricing in the middle of a disaster, being at the mercy of driver ratings, or otherwise trying to dodge insurance laws, Uber (and similar services) lose to more conventional options.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
This isn't hard to fix. Rules :
1. For 24 hours after the ride ends, neither driver nor user's reviews are publicly viewable on Uber. This gives both parties a chance to review the other without being given a chance to retaliate for a negative review.
If either party has a significant safety issue to complain about - aka passenger was threatening/brandished a weapon, or driver was unsafe - there would be a section in the review form to complain about that, and Uber would deal with it immediately.
2. Once the 24 hour period ends, if either party posts a review after that, doing so locks the ability for the other party to "downvote". If I post "bad driver, runs over small animals on purpose, 1/10", the driver can't respond with "stingy tipper 1/10" to lower my reputation in retaliation. The driver would be allowed to directly respond to a negative review so that his response is visible, but this won't affect my reputation score on Uber.
Companies do customer assessment for a long time. This is no new development. Credit companies and banks do it, and when you have a bonus card then a couple of companies are profiling you. So what else is new? Ah yes, Uber the overrated taxi killer and exploiter of drivers is doing it too. I would rather walk home in a Blizzard than ever using their service. Why is that news? Because they are sooooo in or is it because they pay some extra? Either way it sucks. The best thing for all of us would be to ignore that company. Even if the taxi business is doomed the day autonomous cars are available.
And there is no feedback mechanism for Taxi companies right now. NONE.
Use the service or don't use the service.
This (Uber/Lyft) is a vast improvement to the current system allowing for immediate feedback on QOS. If a customer or driver is an asshole, they won't be around much, making it better for both.
Too easily abused, as noted in the article.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Screw Uber. I just want to get from A to B. Don't really care how.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Like retail. I think everyone here as encountered at least one of those individuals where you start being ashamed that you have to share a queue with them...
So speak up and call them out on their behavior. Seriously. I do this, and it's amazing how fast they back down when the person shaming them is not an employee and cannot be fired for doing so.
Where people do things to be polite to each other and not make each other upset? The horror!
The sociopaths who have a meager amount of success will not like this because it puts them into a position to be called on their bullshit.
Don't bet the farm on this working.
Uber drivers can already see where the journey starts and ends, no? Then they could already pick neighborhoods.
Just commenting on the "hundred kinds of lawsuits waiting to happen" - I rather see Uber as a monolith over the failure of the developed world legal system.
There are innumerable rules and regulations which people follow - for a variety of reasons - but then it turns out that you can simply completely ignore a huge chunk of those and it's not very obvious how things get much worse and it seems pretty clear that things are better for a number of people. The state, recognising this, or just fearful of the backlash, fails to pursue violations.
It's like a consensus has developed to simply ignore the taxi regulations. And this is the case in almost all countries Uber operates in.
I find that interesting and slightly funny.
Thinks they are exempt?
Uber has by common agreement been exempt from the laws in pretty much every developed country in the world.
Like, everyone just agreed to utterly ignore a chunk of their regulations.
As I described elsewhere here: it's a monolith over the decay of regulations.
And thus, the cycle continues. Why would you tip for good service if you have been systematically ignored, served lower-quality food and have to wait longer?
You are assuming that non-good tippers will get bad service. That is not necessarily so. What routinely happens is that known good tippers get outstanding service, moderate tippers get good service, and only the most troublesome customers get bad service to encourage them not to return. Even modest tipping is a win for the staff, they won't want to lose those customers.
I'd love it if there was some sort of service evaluation tool that could follow you around, frankly.
I make a deliberate effort to be polite and courteous to service people, even (especially) when circumstances make it hard - it's the mark of being a civilized human. I have *absolutely* no problem with people evaluating my conduct and wearing that evaluation on my sleeve.
Sure, there are going to be some people that just downrate me for personality, or whatever.
What would be great is if the evaluators are LIKEWISE simply rated, like "Uberdriver78423 rates Styopa 2.2*; Uberdriver78423's has rated 1326 passengers an average of 1.1**"
*(on a scale of 1-10)
** meaning Uberdriver78423 is a crabby bitch that hates everyone.
-Styopa
A++++++++ comment. Would read again!
I used to take UberTaxi a lot (It's a dispatch for city taxicabs). One day a driver said "You seem like a nice guy, I wonder why you have such a low rating? I almost didn't pick you up, but things are slow right now, so I did".
I have always been polite and usually had friendly discussions with all the cab drivers who seemed to like me.
It turns out that unlike most people, I had figured out the obscure corner of the Uber website where you can set the tip amount to something other than 20% (you cannot do it via phone so most people don't). I suspect that drivers counted on that 20% to make up for Uber's 10% surcharge and were very unhappy to see my 15% tip... and took it out on my rating.
Before the change eBay would remove vindictive feedback ratings when your feedback rating was justified, and the other party was just mad they got called out on ripping someone off.
Now, there are so many scammers posing as buyers on ebay that I gave up selling things there and just use the list of Craig.
They are obligated legally to get you and transport you where you wish. You are not at the mercy of some asshole wanting to get back at you if you had bad mood or you gave him/her a bad tip.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Reminds me to a story of a friend of mine.
He was in the queue of paying at the cashier in a super market.
The guy in front of him had trouble with his child who wanted sweets. The child was really upset and made a lot of noise.
Suddenly the guy turned around and pointed at my friend saying: "No sweets! Or do you like to end like him!?"
My friend just said: "You know the difference between you and me?"
That customer looked confused, and he added: "I'm fat. You are an asshole. I can change. You won't"
Turned out the customer tried to assault him, but other customers held him back.
My friend is a kung fu master in Hung Gar (sorry, don't know the correct spelling, the style Jacky Chan is doing - don't know his spelling either ;) )
Depending on your state of mind it might have been funny to see what had happened if the idiot really had launched a fight.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
The freedom of movement is a right. It absolutely is
I can almost se the line at saying - you must allow anyone on public transit.
I can't see that crossing into - any private car for hire must take you.
But even the public transit thing, the driver/operator needs to be able to refuse service on some grounds, if nothing else safety. Your right to "movement" (which BTW does not mean MECHANIZED movement) ends where my right to my own life and safety begins.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Shoot an uber driver in the back of his head, and take his cash. Cabbies get this so often they have lifespans like pigeons.
Fellate the Uber driver, or never get a ride again? I would rather shoot him in the back of his head, take his cash and set the car on fire.
Uber and all it stands for needs to be EXTERMINATED!
Last week, I saw a guy in line at the supermarket being punched in the mouth for trying to get an abusive customer to back off. Don't do this. Not worth the hassle. The guy who is being an asshole may also be malicious or violent.
Buyers whine about things before, during, and after the sale, make up lies about never receiving the item, about it being defective when it's not or not-as-described when the description was perfect and with numerous detailed photos of the exact item, try to return it when it was sold AS-IS no returns, return a DIFFERENT item than the one they were actually sent and then whine when you call them on it, wait until the last possible day/hour/minute to finally get around to making payment, retract bids for no apparent reason, constantly nag sellers to re-negotiate prices or make excuses to try to buy or make payment outside of the site (usually in an attempt to scam the seller), etc. That's in addition to people who just fail to make payment or communicate so you have to sit on the item for days at a time before being able to re-list it, but in your world that's apparently the only possible thing a buyer could do wrong, and in eBay's world you can't even complain about that anymore (or if you do, it simply goes down to "positive" feedback with no way to identify "bad" buyers by statistics and you'd have to read every single feedback entry).
In short, you have no idea what you're talking about and a lot of the REASON WHY eBay is less peer-to-peer than it used to be is exactly because of policies that favor the buyer so thoroughly that they can often end up totally screwing over the sellers. Big companies can afford that, but individuals trying to sell just one item here and there (especially if it's an expensive item) can end up not just failing to make money but actually losing a significant amount of money if they unknowingly deal with a couple of the wrong type of "problem" buyers.
Germans dealt with that scam quickly. I wish every country is that well organized.
Last week, I saw a guy in line at the supermarket being punched in the mouth for trying to get an abusive customer to back off. Don't do this. Not worth the hassle. The guy who is being an asshole may also be malicious or violent.
So, because of that remote possibility, you choose to go through life being a total pansy. OK, fine. I choose otherwise. Yeah, I might get punched in the mouth--and the asshole would go to jail because I absolutely would press charges. Not just for vengeance, but to make sure that from that day forward any background check would warn others that he was malicious and violent.
Question: why do you think people believe they can get away with such behavior? Answer: because they're surrounded by pansies who have taught them that they can.
Maybe the rating should be curved. If a driver rates a large percentile of their passengers poorly, then you have to skew all his ratings back up. Same for a passenger rating a driver.
I once had a signature.
The quote from that Time article says it all:
"Taxis are pretty much a public utility. Like subway and bus systems, the electric grid or the sewage system, taxis provide an invaluable service to cities like New York, and the government should play an important role in regulating them."
If you're the type who supports public utilities thinks an expansion of them would be a benefit to society, then sure -- you're not going to be a friend of any services like Uber.
I'd have to 100% disagree. Taxi service is *not* equivalent to a public utility by any stretch of the imagination. Public utilities won a monopoly status primarily because they were trying to distribute a needed service (like water, natural gas or electricity) where a large infrastructure was required, which had to terminate at the endpoint of each customer's residence. If you allowed competing power companies, you'd suddenly be facing problems of companies wanting to run their own lines everywhere, cluttering everything up (or being hugely disruptive if the cables were buried underground and one company or another was always tearing up a road or yard to access them). At some point, you'd even reach a point where new entrants would be physically prevented from selling their service due to lack of space. (How many water or sewer lines can you fit in a given neighborhood?)
Taxi drivers simply operate standard sized motor vehicles, along with every other licensed driver on the roadways. If each taxi company had to build out their own road and highway infrastructure to operate on -- then sure, you'd have an argument for a regulated public utility. It's not like that.
I lost my five star while Uber's rider ratings were still leaking, because a driver went to the wrong location, and felt that I should walk seven blocks to meet them, and when I said no, they felt that that was worth a one-star.
According to Uber's customer service staff, they even confirmed that as the reason, but Uber still feels that the rating should stand, because as a rider, I should not have the expectation of being picked up within a mile of my location.
My impression of Uber's customer service is rather poor, as a result.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
MeowMeowBeenz lets you say how much you like, who you like, when you like, all from a standard non-Boost Mobile phone!
Short of being in a no-go zone due to safety, the [taxi, bus, subway, light rail] can't really refuse customers or switch around rates. On the other hand, an unregulated taxi service like Uber puts you at the whims of ratings and volatile pricing models.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
AI is not a threat to humanity; or at least not a big a threat as humanity itself. I'm sure it would be possibly to have politeness and decency by default. But now technology can solve the problem for us. Sigh...
Because the whole thing could be made ok with non-transferable taxi medallions that are personal. So, every driver is a small business himself. Getting the medallion should be an auction, and to keep the medallion you'd have to have insurance, your car checked regularly, regular drivers license medical, taxi driver test (whatever that would contain, local knowledge of the streets?). The amount of medallions in circulation could be controlled by the balance of taxi drivers income versus the need for more taxis. (yeah, awfully socialistic, who would like trying to do something that's good for everyone..)