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Uber To Ban Riders With Four-Star or Lower Ratings in Australia and New Zealand (bbc.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the how-about-that dept.

Uber is to block customers in Australia and New Zealand from its ride service if they have a low passenger rating. Riders rated four-out-of-five stars or lower will be banned for six months. Ratings are based on feedback left by drivers after each journey. BBC: The move is aimed at improving passenger behaviour, the company said. Uber told the BBC that Australia and New Zealand had been identified as a place to bring in the rule after feedback from drivers. The same policy was introduced in Brazil earlier this this year, Uber said, but it's the first time the control has been rolled out in an English-speaking market. An Uber spokeswoman declined to be drawn on exactly how many of its 2.8 million users in Australia and New Zealand currently had ratings of below 4.0 -- but conceded it was only "a few thousand." The "vast majority" -- believed to be more than 90% -- had ratings of at least 4.5, the company said. The policy will kick in on 19 September and passengers will receive several warnings before they are banned.

12 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    now male uber drivers can threaten females with low stars if they won't kiss em.

  2. What could possibly go wrong by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I can't see how telling everyone this could result in any forms of bad behavior to harm legitimate riders. Not at all.

    Also, how skewed is the rating system if anyone below 4 is considered bad. They need a new system if it's 5 stars or bust.

    1. Re:What could possibly go wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Maybe since Uber deals in cars, they stole the car dealer ratings system?

      My collage in the 80's had a 5-star rating system. It wasn't until I started to teach that I learned a 4 was considered a failure and too many could get you fired. I feel sorry for all those "Good", but not "Excellent" teachers I gave 4 stars to, because no one told me good was bad.

    2. Re:What could possibly go wrong by Ichijo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is why we need a contextual ranking system. Instead of giving the driver 1-5 stars, you mark that you prefer them either more or less than the previous driver. Then the software would use the Condorcet method to rank all drivers in order from least to most preferred, and assign each driver a percentile rank from 1% to 99%. This flattens the distribution curve and provides more granularity into how well each driver is liked.

      It's like California's restaurant inspection grading system. Everyone's an "A" so it's tough to compare.

      --
      Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
  3. That's certainly innovation. by bistromath007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I didn't think it was possible for them to find a way for internet businesses to double down on how badly they've fucked up the star rating system, but here we are.

    1. Re:That's certainly innovation. by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Someone should point out to them that 'Black Mirror' is a screenplay, not a business plan.

    2. Re:That's certainly innovation. by Uberbah · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is why many sites are eliminating stars or percent or x/10 as a rating, and just giving users a choice of thumbs up or thumbs down. From what I've seen, except for a very few conscientious individuals, most users use 1-star to mean "I don't like it", and a five-star rating is "I like it".

      The five star system is nice so you can read the two and three star ratings - people who ran into issues with a product but didn't hate it. Then you can skip the one stars, from possible cranks or haters, and the glowing five stars which could be written by the manufacturer's family.

  4. No tip, low rating by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Does this mean drivers will give low ratings to passengers if they don't tip?

  5. Ratings are such a joke these days by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Remember when 5 stars meant perfect and 4 stars meant good and 3 meant average and 2 means poor and 1 means unacceptable. Now 4 means poor for some reason? Because everyone on both sides is expected to rate the other side with nothing less than a perfect rating. Policies like this, where getting a 4/5 means kicking you off the service, only give everyone even more incentive to rate people and services with nothing worse than a perfect score. Give them a rating that is even 1 single point less then perfect risks getting them suspended or banned. That's just gross perversion of the whole point of a multi-tiered rating system.

  6. Banning riders for low ratings by oldgraybeard · · Score: 3, Insightful

    WOW seems really bad and invasive. Since the Uber CEO just said during a business show interview that Uber is about ending car ownership.
    So you ban riders from using a service. While at the same time saying car ownership needs to be ended.
    Uber is preparing for an IPO, the CEO is talking about new cultural norms, etc etc. Investors will be lining up for us.

    This guy gives me the creeps.

    Just my 2 cents ;)

  7. Black Mirror by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No, we don't any form of ranking system which bans people from a service based on a highly subjective rating system otherwise we'll end up in the dystopia portrayed in Black Mirror's Nosedive episode.

  8. Re:Black Mirror by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, we don't any form of ranking system which bans people from a service based on a highly subjective rating system otherwise we'll end up in the dystopia portrayed in Black Mirror's Nosedive episode.

    That's exactly what popped into my mind when I read about this.

    And how can a "5" be great, while a "4" means you can't get a ride? What kind of fucked up scale is that? Why even have numbers below 4? It's turning a rating system into a "pass/fail" test.

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...