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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.

37 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 omnichad · · Score: 2

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

    2. 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.

    3. Re:What could possibly go wrong by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2, Funny

      My collage in the 80's

      So was it an art school? That would explain why you can't spell 'college'.

    4. 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.
    5. Re:What could possibly go wrong by sheramil · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Perhaps there could be a tag system, like for anime porn on Sankakucomplex. This driver has the "Quiet", "Knows_The_City_Well" and "Respects_Other_Drivers" tags, but he also has the "Body_Odor" and "Farts" tags, so, choose carefully.

      Passengers could have similar tags; "Consistently_Drunk", "Will_Not_Shut_Up_About_Rick_And_Morty", "Difficulty_Paying" and "Changes_Destination_More_Than_Three_Times_Per_Trip".

    6. Re:What could possibly go wrong by q_e_t · · Score: 2

      Really things should get renormalised when there is enough data, but you have to make assumptions about what the distribution would be if everyone was objective. But do you know if it should be gaussian around some value of 5.5, or more skewed? If the product is expected to be truly excellent you might expect all 10s, but I never give a 10. If I was buying a text editor, then to get a 10 I'd expect it to write everything for me and wash the dishes and take out the trash.

    7. Re:What could possibly go wrong by kaatochacha · · Score: 2

      Same here. If I'm grading a 1-5 scale, you don't get a 1 unless you try to murder me, and you don't get a 5 unless i leave your company hoping you'll run for president and save the country.
      It's always seemed stupid to me that with five choices, we're forced into only 2, and the other three are wasted.

      Years ago, in college, when rating women my ratings were always too low. I explained : 5 is the middle, I go from there. My roommates used the "7 is a C, that's the middle".

  3. Options by Tablizer · · Score: 3

    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.
    1. Re:Options by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Funny

      did you even try to read the fucking summary?

      I'm a 3-star reader.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  4. 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 Dutch+Gun · · Score: 2

      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".

      I've occasionally felt bad giving a four-star rating to a product simply for being "good", because many times ratings are so skewed that anything with a four-star rating or worse is likely to be considered suspect - even though I feel nothing is wrong with four out of five stars for merely "good" products.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    2. 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.

    3. 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. Re:That's certainly innovation. by sconeu · · Score: 2

      Came for the Black Mirror comment. Wasn't disappointed.

      --
      General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  5. 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?

    1. Re:No tip, low rating by agm · · Score: 5, Informative

      NZ and Australia are first world countries, we don't tip here.

    2. Re:No tip, low rating by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 2

      Most of the Americans who react like this are just tired. They're tired of their country being the butt of every dumb joke for the last half century. They're tired of every comment about their country being that it's a vile racist shithole. They're tired of the entire world looking down on their country, regardless of whether they've ever actually seen it. They're tired of every positive aspect of America being downplayed or overlooked for the past fifty years.

      But apparently you can't stop being an asshole towards Americans. Well, enjoy a world where America is less engaged. After all, you spitefully demanded this.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:No tip, low rating by mjwx · · Score: 2

      Most of the Americans who react like this are just tired. They're tired of their country being the butt of every dumb joke for the last half century. They're tired of every comment about their country being that it's a vile racist shithole. They're tired of the entire world looking down on their country

      Here's a novel idea, if you don't like how your country is perceived, stereotype or not... Why do you do something to change it.

      America and Americans are perceived like that because you behave like that. I mean you only need to look at you sig to understand why we think you're all backwards and confused, it couldn't be more wrong if you tried.. Your president and the Alt-Right are demonstrating that yes, the US is a racist shithole. The level of crime and poverty, specifically the gap between rich and poor are things we expect to see in third world nations.

      I'm risking a mod down (probably more than risking) from the uber-jingoists here, but realistically you remain the butt of dumb jokes because you're reinforcing the stereotypes.

      Or you could do something as mindbogglingly progressive and sane as instead of getting all offended and hot under the collar about the jokes, roll with them. I'm an Australian who wears a cork brimmed hat and drinks Fosters (despite doing neither of those things), I've got a German mate who's strategy is to mention the war and do the Monty Python sketch straight off the bat to get it out of the way (he's a good bloke BTW). I live in the UK, where oddly enough, teeth seem pretty damn good and electronics are reliable, it's true that brits do love to queue though. Learn to laugh at yourselves instead of being butt-hurt.

      And yes, I've been to the US, I love Americans like brothers (brothers who live very far away, erm... that's called "tongue in cheek" humour) and have visited there before (in fact I'll be back in October) and I've always wondered where you hide the racist arseholes we see online because I've never met an American like that in person in the US.

      --
      Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  6. And let the race begin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  7. When Uber can be choosy by rsilvergun · · Score: 2

    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/
  8. 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.

  9. 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 ;)

  10. Perfect recipe by imidan · · Score: 2

    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.

  11. Rating at my car dealership service by nitehawk214 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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
    1. Re:Rating at my car dealership service by vux984 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I've gotten that line several times now. I see two approaches:

      1) Rate it one star with a comment that:

      I was perfectly happy right up until I had to take this piece-of-shit survey, and was told that not taking it would reflect badly on the employee. I have far more important things to do with my time than spending it rating every last bit of interaction I have with your company. Don't worry, if you fuck up: I'll let you know. Guess what: YOU JUST FUCKED UP. The ball is in your court now, fix it.

      Thanks to rating inflation, one stars are uncommon enough that management DOES actually often look at them. And if some guy or gal gets fired over a 1 star review that says the above, really... in the long run you are doing them a favor -- they deserve a better employer.

      2) Refuse to take the survey, ask to speak to the appropriate management directly, and then explain the above to them, in person.

    2. Re:Rating at my car dealership service by martinX · · Score: 2

      The distributorship sent me a survey after a service, and when I didn't give a 10 rating (I gave 8 or 9, reasoning that no-one is perfect), the next question was "what could we have done better?". I figured that since there was really nothing they could have done better, I went back and changed it to a 10. We gave them the car, they serviced it in the time they said they would, job done.

      --
      When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
  12. Re:Say what? by squiggleslash · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.
  13. Re:Star system is terrible. by fluffernutter · · Score: 2

    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.
  14. This will do very little .. I'm a (former) driver by satsuke · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  15. Re:Talk about rating inflation by war4peace · · Score: 2

    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)
  16. Obligatory XKCD by pem · · Score: 2

    https://xkcd.com/937/

  17. Re:Say what? by Xenx · · Score: 2

    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.

  18. 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.

  19. Yep. It means you can't tell when above average by raymorris · · Score: 2

    If the max rating is expected for being acceptable, that pretty makes it impossible to distinguish acceptable from exceptional, doesn't it.

  20. 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...