Jeff BercoviciForbes Staff
I cover technology with an emphasis on social and digital media.full bio →
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Uber's Ratings Terrorize Drivers And Trick Riders. Why Not Fix Them?
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A few days ago, I had a novel Uber experience: I took a ride in a car as grimy and musty-smelling as a typical yellow cab. The driver was friendly and knew his way around, but he was clearly falling short of Uber’s standard that the sedans in its UberX fleet be in “excellent condition.” Since customer feedback is “important to insuring a high-quality experience,” according to the company, when it came time to rate my trip, I only gave the driver three out of five stars.
Just kidding. I gave him five stars, of course. What do you think I am, a psychopath?
Much has been written about how user-generated ratings, backed by social profile authentication, are the mechanism that allow strangers to trust one another on peer-to-peer networks like UberX and Airbnb. What hasn’t received as much attention is the other feelings that arise when people are required to pass judgment on one another, feelings that render the ratings themselves untrustworthy.
I started giving out automatic full marks after an erratic and somewhat scary trip in an Uber-summoned New York City taxi with a driver who didn’t know his way around and required me to provide turn-by-turn directions, even in Manhattan. At the end of the trip, the driver turned around and begged my fiancee to give him five stars, explaining that he was one bad review away from being deactivated and losing his access to the platform. He wouldn’t let us out of the cab until she promised to do so. Afterward, we agreed: That was a pretty annoying ride, but not so bad it was worth punishing someone financially over it.
Most regular Uber users have a story like this. “Community” creator Dan Harmon recently told his hilarious one on an episode of his live-on-stage podcast. The episode is titled “I Make A Five Stars.” Fortune’s Erin Griffith saysa driver recently called her and offered to pick her up only on the promise of a perfect rating. And so on.
In theory, for a driver to waste your time/endanger your life/make you carsick/etc. and then lay on a guilt trip and ask that you lie on his behalf is adding insult to injury. It’s a justification for knocking off an additional star or two. But mostly we don’t do that, because we’re human beings. Withholding something that costs me nothing to give and has real value to someone else doesn’t feel like justice. It feels like spite.
That’s how I see it, anyway. Curious how typical my view is, I put the question out on Twitter and Facebook: Do you rate individuals providing a service in a peer-to-peer setting as rigorously as you would a business providing that same service? Or do you give five stars by default?
While my sample wasn’t big enough to generate anything I’d call data, it mostly supported my intuition: A large number of those who answered one way or another said they default to the highest possible rating for everything other than the very worst rides. A typical response:
That squares with the actual data as compiled by technology writer Tom Slee inan essay about internet reputation systems, On Airbnb, eBay EBAY +2.63% and the ride-sharing platform BlaBlaCar, average ratings are all heavily skewed toward the maximum. On BlaBlaCar, 98.9% of ratings are five stars. Uber itself saysthat 1- and 2-star reviews together account for only 1% of the total, a fact it cites as evidence of the quality of its service.
If you use sites like Yelp YELP +2.52% or Tripadvisor, you’ve probably had the experience of reading a review of a restaurant or hotel that was so scathing, you felt comfortable disregarding it as the obvious work of a crank. There’s no way to leave a 1,500-word screed on Uber. All you can do is give one star. But that one-star rating is the equivalent of the 1,500-word screed in that, in isolation, it probably says more about the giver than the recipient.
Yet Uber drivers live in fear of those one-star ratings because they’re required to maintain such a high average rating or risk excommunication. Exactly how high isn’t totally clear, which only fuels the paranoia.This site for London drivers says it’s 4.5; this one for San Diego drivers says 4.7. In any case, the ease with which spiteful passengers can get drivers kicked off Uber is one of the chief grievances of groups like the App-Based Drivers Association, which is attempting to organize drivers in Seattle.
The drivers have a point, especially when you consider the responses of the people who told me they don’t automatically hand out five stars for every ride. Topix.com CEO Chris Tollesand Dow Jones VentureWire reporter Lora Kolodny both said they consider four stars the default, reserving the last star for exceptionally good service. That sounds sensible: Why would Uber invite riders to use a scale of one to five unless it wants them to make fine distinctions? But in practice, it means a rating intended by a user as a gesture of approval is in fact a vote to have a driver fired. That’s screwed up.
YouTube used to have a one-to-five-stars system for rating videos, but in 2009 it switched to a simpler thumbs up/thumbs down system. The reason for the change was simple: As Facebook designer Margaret Gould Stewart, who oversaw the transition, explained at TED last March, most ratings were fives or ones anyway. The binary model merely made explicit what was already happening.
In effect, ratings on Uber are binary, too, with the added twist that the rare cranks willing to hand out one star have extra-powerful votes. Uber likes this system because it enjoys being able to say all of its drivers have near-perfect ratings. But it’s a harsh one for drivers, and also for customers, who find themselves repeatedly forced to choose between guilt, spite and ignorance.
