Slashdot Mirror
Uber To Ban Riders With Four-Star or Lower Ratings in Australia and New Zealand (bbc.co.uk)
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.
now male uber drivers can threaten females with low stars if they won't kiss em.
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.
Shouldn't that be up to the passenger? Offer a discount for riding with annoying drivers. Just make sure it's not the default.
Table-ized A.I.
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.
Does this mean drivers will give low ratings to passengers if they don't tip?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive
I wonder how quickly "ratings" will simply be an additional commodity sold with the ride ?
This opens up passengers to being blackmailed into giving additional money to the driver to ensure they maintain their rating.
your economy is well and truly farked.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
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.
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
Uber for degenerates. A monthly fee for drivers and riders, but you get the fee waived if you've been banned from Uber or have felony convictions.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
... for Congress.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
It's a perfect recipe for gaming the ratings system with quid pro quo. Drivers are punished for ratings lower than 4.6, passengers are punished for ratings lower than 4. Both parties are now incentivised to give each other 5 star ratings, and both have leverage against each other to prevent lower ratings.
The only thing this can possibly accomplish is to further devalue the ratings system, itself. I guess it will make middle managers happy with the metrics to see that 100% of drivers fall within the top 10% of drivers, and 100% of passengers fall within the top 20% of passengers. Those are really great numbers.
Outright banning seems counter to Uber's twisted money-making schemes.
Just charge the low stars more and/or give them increased wait times. As their stars go down, these things increase. Then let drivers decide if they want to deal with anyone under 4*, and give them a pass if they don't.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
In travel guides, the number of stars tends to denote how far out of your way you should travel.
one star: it's dark, it's rainy, you just need a a clean place to stay for the night
five star: the entire point of your vacation was to stay at this place.
If it doesn't meet a minimal standard of cleanliness, it doesn't get listed.
Of course, some guides have more exacting standards. One Michelin star is still extraordinary.
I got guilt-tripped into giving a 5-star rating at my car dealership for some routine service. "If you give any less than 5 stars, or no rating at all, our management considers that a failure."
Or maybe I was blackmailed. "Give us a 5-star rating if you ever want your vehicle to pass inspection again."
The stupid part was I was very happy with the service that day... right up until the guilt trip. I gave him the 5 anyhow, its not that poor guy's fault the entire world is fucked.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
My plan to ruin Uber. Become an uber driver and give all my passengers 1 star ratings. Pretty soon Uber will have no passengers left with good enough scores to get a ride.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Or just say "fuck it" and go to the competition now.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Seemed to start with eBay where they gave you three choices, and for some reason you're only allowed to use the "Good" rating when rating anyone, because "Neutral" will cause the ratee to get, uh, irate. So there's no way to distinguish between someone who sold you exactly what they said they'd sell and shipped it on time, and that person who made a special effort to make sure you got what you needed a little more quickly.
And this has been going on since the late 1990s, so it's not new.
And it's stupid.
Oh, did you know that when your cellphone carrier follows up with you after you call them to change your rate plan, to ask how the customer care person was, that if you don't rate them 5/5 for everything there are "consequences"? Like "Too many 4/5s, you're getting canned" type consequences?
But sure, you're going to rate people honestly now knowing that.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
that is one way to get rid of riders that don't tip
Since all Uber drivers are so wealthy, they could just offer ten dollars in exchange for a good rating.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I don't think you understand parent's point. You have to know what the criteria is before giving the rating. The requirement of an Uber driver is to pick you up and get you where you need to go. As long as they satisfy that requirement, why would they deserve less than 5? Maybe if someone puked in the back seat and they didn't clean it before picking you up that might warrant an in between?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
They should be fixing real problems. For example at Heathrow airport in London, England I had an Uber that didn't show up. I could see that the driver was on the other side of the airport waiting while I was in the designated spot for being picked up. The driver hit me with a £10 charge. Another couple had the same thing happen to them while I was there. Got the money back eventually.
Now with extra stars!
First cold hard reality check is this will be used to harass young women, non-whites, and people with accents, all of which are banned by these countries' constitutions.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This will not dissuade bad passengers very much.
Presently the driver has to issue a rating immediately at the end of every trip. The passenger has days to do their rating.
Practically speaking, if the driver leaves a bad rating, the passenger is guaranteed to leave a 1 star .. tit for tat retaliation.
And yeah, the system is setup where anything less than 5 stars is a bad review for the driver. If his/her rating goes below 4.6, they get kicked off the platform.
When Uber kills off all the taxi companies by sheer volume, and then makes everybody behave (except Kalanick, I suppose) it's just good business, right?
1-to-5 star rating can be used in many ways. There are cases where 1 is lowest, 3 is average and 5 is "bestest". My company uses this type of 5-star rating.
Uber's 1-to-5 star rating behaves differently. You (be it either the driver or the rider) start with 5 stars, which means "100% of the expected rating". Any rating below 5 stars means something was wrong.
My rider Uber rating is 4.95. I know I got dinged once for accidentally slamming a car's door (wind plus me not being used with that car), not sure about the other couple cases.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
https://xkcd.com/937/
The purpose of the rating system for costumer support is to put pressure on their staff to work as hard as they can for as little as possible. The rating system is quite useless for gauging performance, you have no idea whether the person giving a bad rating was mad at the rep or company policies
Because of taxation and Uber's wage rates, a driver working for Uber makes less $/hour than does a normal taxi driver in Australia.
The main difference is that there are no requirements for entry to be an Uber driver other than a car, driver's license and phone with the app. Taxi drivers have higher requirements - including being registered and displaying their registration card inside the taxi.
And all of the complaints people used to make about taxi drivers are now made about Uber drivers - and worse. An Uber driver will stop "here" rather than in the best place or make illegal turns to pickup a passenger because "stars".
Seems this episode of Black Mirror, named "Nosedive" is coming true in little steps here and there. Is this really the world we want?
For the non-Netflix people, read about this dark future here: Nosedive
The one I hate is when dealing with online support. The survey for the interaction is at the end of the interaction. On more than one occasion the interaction has ended in a supervisor or another department needing to get back to me. I then get the survey at the end asking if they resolved my issue. Considering the company has failed to get back to me more than once, I cannot actually answer the question truthfully without negatively affecting the rep's score. I just end up saying yes, and then bitch about the survey in the comments.
Customer was wearing a Justin Bieber shirt.
1 star.
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.
I want to know what the others hated about the thing they graded.
Often times the fact a crank or an idiot hates something will tell you more than the glowing or factual but dry reviews.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." works both ways.
Granted... You can't really apply that to services, like Uber.
Nor should a simple 5-star system be used for something like that, where both providing and experiencing a service is utterly subjective.
The point of a grade system is to eliminate subjectivity and to present the quality of that which is graded in an objective fashion.
And you can't do that when people can give grades based on personal preferences and hangups.
There's a name for that. Prejudice.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
If the max rating is expected for being acceptable, that pretty makes it impossible to distinguish acceptable from exceptional, doesn't it.
Will they be banning drivers which have similar customer ratings ? I use a regular Taxi myself in the SF east bay. Easier to get and I know how much it will cost me every time. I tried Uber a couple of times and they couldn't fit 3 in a car, or there wasn't a van available.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Another way to discriminate against people you may not like or who didn't tip enough or whatever it was that pushed your button that day. Wonderful.
Fortunately, I see no way this 'feature' could ever be abused or hacked or spoofed, especially with such a fine, upstanding company like Uber running the system.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
And how long do you think it will take Uber to realised that they just banned every single Abo in Australia and new Zealand who ever took an Uber?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
What's the point of having 1,2,3 stars in the rating in that case?
Sounds like they need to transition to a thumbs up/down scoring model.
An easy fix is to do what Airbnb does: don't release ratings until both sides have rated.
I don't think drivers can see how an individual passenger rated them, or passengers see how an individual driver rated them.
I think the rating system should be a lot simpler.
- If the driver picked you up at the appointed place, and got you where you needed to be without being an annoyance or breaking every road rule known, didn't kill you (or assault you), and didn't obviously lengthen the journey to extract more money out of you. Good.
- Similarly, if your passenger was there on time, didn't leave a mess in the car, and wasn't annoying and didn't assault / kill you. Good.
- Anything else should be various shades of bad, with killing drivers / passengers obviously being the worst.
This way, the ratings systems would be a lot easier to understand and use. As many point out, I am not sure what a 4 star rating is. To me, that is more than acceptable, and 5 stars suggests something exceptional.
If a driver / passenger has gone above and beyond simply, then there ought to be a more generic feedback form where you take you can express your gratitude or whatever.
Well... I got 5-star four times so far, 4-star three or four times, and the rest were 3s because I stopped giving a shit. If you get a 5, a 4 or a 3 you know you're not going to be fired, otherwise there's no difference other than bragging (to whom, I still wonder). Raises? They don't depend on that rating. I had 5 stars with no raise and 3 stars with 10% raise.
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
I feel like that if the passenger or driver were killed that would preempt any ability to leave a 1 star rating.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork