It's amusing to point out the failures of government bureaucracy, and while it's admirable that they're trying, I think we can all agree that the people responsible for these measures aren't exactly blessed with an overabundance of competence.
> he was clearly falling short of Uber’s standard... I gave him five stars, of course.
Why? I wonder if the author would continually frequent a deli that regularly served him rotten meat out of some misplaced sense of guilt.
> He wouldn’t let us out of the cab until she promised to [give 5 stars]. Afterward, we agreed: That was a pretty annoying ride, but not so bad it was worth punishing someone financially over it.
Yeah, I always find it annoying when I get quasi-kidnapped too. But who's to blame the kidnappers? Petty corruption and extortion is a totally acceptable part of life in a civilized society! It's not as if there were some sort of completely anonymous, dead-simple mechanism to instantly eliminate this sort of behavior.
> Most regular Uber users have a story like this.
I don't, nor have I heard any such thing from anyone I know. Where's the data to back this statement?
> my sample wasn’t big enough to generate anything I’d call data
Ergo, you have no business writing authoritatively on this subject.
> 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.
If it's so screwed up, then why would anyone drive for Uber? Surely, all of their drivers would be getting fired and no one would want to work for them if that were the case. The fact is, it's not, and the reason is clear if you have a basic understanding of statistics, particularly normal distributions.
> 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.
Again, if it's so harsh, why would either group voluntarily participate in the system? Nobody is forcing either side to participate, and yet they both do so in droves.
> Fundamentally, a five-star rating is far too simple.
And yet the article you cite advocates something radically simpler.
The author in the article you linked to is too far on the "Mercy" side of Mercy vs. Justice. Five stars is my default, but I don't have a problem giving out 2-stars. In a nearly endless labor pool, this is appropriate consumer behavior, and I see it as improving rides for other consumers.
Downvote me like the other commenter who expressed this, bitches!
//edit: At the time of writing this, sneak's comment was in the downvoted greyed-out font.
It seems to be working sufficiently for Uber and their happy customers. Uber is a premium service. Drivers should be fired if they don't know their way around, have a dirty or smelly car, or otherwise request things of me as a customer beyond my destination address. I routinely give out two and three star ratings, knowing it could well get people fired. 5 stars is for a perfect trip that could not be improved.
Say I pick up an uber, and everything goes exactly as planned. No weird side streets, no funky smell in the car, and an amicable driver. Not the best uber experience - I've had uber drivers free water bottles and nightlife recommendations at the ready in the past - but we got exactly where we wanted to go.
The service was satisfactory, but not above average. What do I rate this driver?
The answer to this question varies depending on who you are. The problem is that there is no standard for riders to objectively rate uber drivers. It's the equivalent of the easy-A teacher in high school versus the strict grading-on-a-curve teacher.
People have their own biases and experiences that affect the scale they rate on. The differences in my own personal grading syllabus versus another persons can get people on uber fired for the exact same ride experience.
If Uber has anyone statistically competent on staff, they'll normalize your scores and compute an individualized scale for you. I.e., let i = individual rider, j = individual driver. Then they'll use a model like:
score[i,j] = a[i]z[j]+b[i] + noise
Then they store the z[j] for each driver.
So if I consistently rate drivers between 2 and 4, while you consistently rate drivers between 4 and 5, then a[me] = 3, b[me] = 2 while for you a[you]=4 and b[you]=5. If you rate a driver as 4 (i.e. z[j] = 0), then Uber will tell me the driver is rated a[me]0 + b[me] = 2.
Uber can then rate their drivers internally based on z[driver], not the individual ratings.
It is of course possible that Uber is completely statistically incompetent, but I doubt that.
Uber aren't incompetent, they just don't care, much like any other marketplace with a huge market share. Most of the time the variance in how customers rate drivers will average out. Even though they'll accidentally fire and ban a few good drivers due to random bad luck it doesn't affect Uber much since they still have plenty of other drivers. Same reason why companies like Amazon are willing to ban reliable Marketplace sellers on spurious grounds like moving into an address that someone once scammed them from years ago.
Why do you believe Uber (with hundreds of employees, and in vicious competition for drivers [1]) doesn't care enough have one employee devote a week to doing textbook linear regression?
[1] Uber is willing to pay Lyft for the privilege of having their recruiter sit in the car with the driver.
Yeap. For example, Criticker (movie ratings site) simply ranks everyone on a 10-tier scale, so if you only rate movies up to 30%, a movie with a 29% rating with be on the 9th or 10th tier.
I wish the 5 stars system worked like that. I love UberX, but I don't like the negotiation at the end of the ride over ratings. It hasn't been as bad for me as in the Forbes article, but there's a definite read-between-the-lines of always giving 5 stars.
I'd much rather give my feedback/rating in private once I'm out of the cab, and for the driver to do the same with me. I really don't need/want to know how they rated me. The "I gave you 5 stars, now you rate me" conversation is always awkward.
There is no criteria for a five-star rating. Did he get me where I needed to go at the expected price? Pretty much - that seems at best to rate average.
I don't even know what a five-star rating would be.
I gave him one because I really didn't feel the need to spend the time figuring out exactly what I should give him.
However, the problem I have, in retrospect, is this:
DON'T FRICKIN' ASK FOR A FIVE-STAR RATING WITHOUT A GOOD REASON.
They shouldn't ask, which I would explain; if they persisted, I would give a low rating for that.
In terms of stars, drivers get dropped if they are below around 4.5 on average, so 5 stars basically means "keep this driver" and anything less means "fire this driver".
I've had a driver tell me he would give me a $20 coupon for future rides, pull my phone, input the coupon code (which didn't work, since it was first riders only) and rate himself five stars.
Yep. This is in Perth, Australia. At least one of the UberX drivers specifically said "See, I've just given you 5 stars, now you rate me" before I left the car. UberX has only been here a month though, so maybe drivers (and riders?) aren't sure how the system is meant to work. I've had 4 rides on UberX now.
No one's stopped me from leaving the car, and the rides were all okay so I'm not complaining about any drivers. But the implication I got was of reciprocal 5 stars.
That said, this article completely ignored the very significant failures in Uber's rating system: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2014/08/14/what-ar...
Fundamentally, a five-star rating is far too simple. In my opinion, an example of this done well is Ebay's reputation system.