Uber To Ban Riders With Four-Star or Lower Ratings in Australia and New Zealand (bbc.co.uk) 208
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.
Wow (Score:5, Insightful)
now male uber drivers can threaten females with low stars if they won't kiss em.
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"now male uber drivers can threaten females with low stars if they won't kiss em."
It might also get them killed to avoid a bad review.
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No this will mostly affect black riders.
Now they've done it - they're going to piss off Sauron [wikipedia.org].
What could possibly go wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Maybe since Uber deals in cars, they stole the car dealer ratings system?
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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.
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My collage in the 80's
So was it an art school? That would explain why you can't spell 'college'.
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I have dyslexia, but I can still spell asshole.
Take your head out of there and the smell will go away.
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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".
Re:What could possibly go wrong (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.
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I think your logic is flawed.
In a restaurant inspection system, the goal is food safety. If you are not making people sick because you are following basic best practice, that's an A.
Same with UBER. If the driver gets me from A:B in a clean car without causing me hassles. That's 5 stars.
By ranking people like you suggest, it penalizes people for nothing to do with the service. It becomes like Microsofts ranking system that forces 10% to be sacked every year even though they may be performing fine.
In a bad mo
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I agree, any restaurant that gets a perfect food safety inspection score (if that ever actually happens) should get the highest possible cleanliness rating. On this point, where do we disagree?
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Black Mirror (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Black Mirror (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 [wikipedia.org] 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.
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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?
Log-linear?
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It's like California's restaurant inspection grading system. Everyone's an "A" so it's tough to compare.
I think you misunderstand the purpose, the McDonald's and the Michelin star restaurant next door both have an A because the food is made under hygienic conditions. It's not a food critique, it just means it's safe to eat and because they're forced to very publicly display the result those who don't get an A quickly either improve or go out of business. What you see is the system working as intended. Same way Uber is not interested in a popularity contest or finding a winner, they just want to find the probl
Re:What could possibly go wrong (Score:4, 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".
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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.
No, for inspections it makes sense, anything below A means they are doing something wrong that could have serious health implications. But it makes no sense for a service grade.
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What a completely fucked up mess.
I mean, how can a "5" be great, while a "4" means you're so awful that you can't even get a ride?
If they do it that way, why even have numbers below 4? What kind of fucked up scale is that?
It's turning a rating system into a "pass/fail" test.
Options (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.
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A rider is a passenger.
Re:Options (Score:4, Funny)
I'm a 3-star reader.
That's certainly innovation. (Score:5, Insightful)
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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 - e
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What I would like to see is star ratings on match.com.
THAT would be useful.
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Yeah, because reviews by infatuated wash-out daters and exes are going to be so impartial.
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Re:That's certainly innovation. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
1-star ratings are more useful than 5-star ones (Score:2)
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
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Sure, and I have a (old by this point) example of that: years ago I bought some memory off of Ebay, from a seller that had a 96% rating. Shoulda coulda woulda checked the other four percent, as the seller always left negative revenge feedback in response to complaints. Which happened to me when I got the memory certified as DOA and Ebay forced the return.
So I still check the one stars, but don't spend a lot of time there as they read like a drunken Trump tweet. Let's say a one star for Joe's Bistro:
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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".
However, no matter what, the ratings for "This is Spinal Tap" need to go up to 11.
Re:That's certainly innovation. (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone should point out to them that 'Black Mirror' is a screenplay, not a business plan.
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Came for the Black Mirror comment. Wasn't disappointed.
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Came to see the responses to the Black Mirror comment. Slightly disappointed at their relative dearth, but thank you for doing your part.
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Came here to see the correct usage of the word 'dearth'. Wasn't disappointed. ***** rating. Will read again. Dearth.
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No tip, low rating (Score:2, Insightful)
Does this mean drivers will give low ratings to passengers if they don't tip?
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Probably... although, uber expects the passengers to pay uber drivers with tips instead of them paying them.
Re:No tip, low rating (Score:5, Informative)
NZ and Australia are first world countries, we don't tip here.
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Another comment like that?
You are quite a spiteful person, aren't you? Are all Americans like you?
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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
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Well, if you are indeed like that, then it's "arsehole", not "asshole". I prefer proper English and there is no reason to be nasty to the donkeys.
And as for America being less engaged, that would actually be really nice.
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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 po
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With constant sneering "fuck you" messages like this, is it any wonder the Americans are withdrawing from the world?
There was no sneering in GP, just a statement of fact. The only one sneering here is you because you got your pride hurt.
And let the race begin (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.
When Uber can be choosy (Score:3)
Ratings are such a joke these days (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.
Banning riders for low ratings (Score:4, Insightful)
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
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Sorry, your uber rating just went to 2. You are now banned from uber.
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I am 62, self employed (30+ years) and wondering what the market is for a mostly blind contract programmer lol. Just taught myself Swift and sold & delivered my first in house iOS app for a client. 2018 looks to be my best year ever
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Hello Lyft.
New start-up idea (Score:2)
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.
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I hear Travis Kalanick is looking for a new CEO gig... he'd be a perfect fit!
Need this in America ... (Score:2)
... for Congress.
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Yeah, maybe we could regularly count votes or something.
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The problem is that it's always "MY congresscritter does a good job... it's those OTHER assholes that are the problem".
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We already do
We already don't.
Uber bans.
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Voters approve of their own congressional representatives much more than they approve of anyone else being allowed representation.
Perfect recipe (Score:3)
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.
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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.
However it's doomed to failure as it essentially the Prisoners Dilemma as neither side knows what the other will do.
"Star" rating systems have pretty much gone the way of the old percentages score for video games. When 80% became the lowest score, 90% stopped meaning anything special.
However this move will just force customers back to traditional taxis, thus hastening their inevitable demise.
Stupid idea (Score:2)
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.
Rating at my car dealership service (Score:5, 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.
Re:Rating at my car dealership service (Score:4, 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.
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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.
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Yep, got this buying at used merc dealer.
I felt sorry for the guy: it was like his life depended on that ranking. Screw management for creating guilt trip ranking.
AHA! (Score:2)
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.
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one way (Score:2)
that is one way to get rid of riders that don't tip
$10 (Score:2)
Instead of this... (Score:2)
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.
Coming soon: Class Action Lawsuits! (Score:2)
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.
This will do very little .. I'm a (former) driver (Score:5, 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.
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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
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I feel like that if the passenger or driver were killed that would preempt any ability to leave a 1 star rating.
Obligatory XKCD (Score:3)
Nosedive (Score:2)
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 [wikipedia.org]
Nuff said. (Score:2)
Customer was wearing a Justin Bieber shirt.
1 star.
Are they going to BAN drivers ? (Score:2)
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.
Oh great (Score:2)
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.
I Give it 2 Weeks (Score:2)
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?
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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.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yep. It means you can't tell when above average (Score:3)
If the max rating is expected for being acceptable, that pretty makes it impossible to distinguish acceptable from exceptional, doesn't it.
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Or just say "fuck it" and go to the competition now.
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Orville as well. I so canâ(TM)t wait until our entire society goes this way! Itâ(TM)s going to be a blast!
Trademark, indeed.
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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 abou
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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.