Out of the Pool!

Back when I first became aware of Uber, and the other ridesharing aps, I remarked in this space that the whole concept was something in which I would only consider participating if that were one of the demands made by terrorists holding my wife hostage. Even granted that these services have become extremely popular in some areas, the first-hand accounts of people trying to make a living driving for Uber sound worse than any job I’ve ever had, and the idea of hitching a ride with someone I don’t know has not appealed to me since a classmate of mine was murdered while hitchhiking forty years ago. But none of that really compares to the company’s new policy of kicking people off of its service if their “rider rating” drops below 4 out of a possible 5…

You can pick up the Business Insider article here if you’d like, but they’re usually reliable to be going on with. Uber instituted a two-way rating system a number of years ago, with drivers allowed to rate their riders as well as the riders rating their drivers. I’ve also noted in this space that this has resulted in at least some percentage of Uber users and drivers developing a “quid pro quo” arrangement – you give me five stars, and I will give you five stars” deals that effectively gut both parts of the system. This doesn’t appear to have prevented a number of problem drivers from remaining “employed” by Uber, although in fairness we should note that the number of driver-related mass shootings has gone down in the last few years. It also hasn’t, apparently, prevented large numbers of riders treating their drivers as badly as they do most other service workers…

It isn’t clear from this article if the company already has such an arrangement with the drivers, and I certainly don’t plan to start driving for Uber in order to find out. Originally, of course, the whole business model was supposed to be self-correcting: drivers who compiled a bad record wouldn’t get any riders, and riders who were unpleasant enough (on whatever dimension) would not be offered any rides. But with the aforementioned accommodations reached between drivers and riders, it would appear that the company has felt the need to take a more active hand in managing the actual rides it sells…

Now, admittedly, I have no experience with Uber in either role, and no clear information on what effect (if any) being banned from using the service for six months at a time would have on the behavior of habitual riders. But as someone who does spend his working life dealing with anonymous rankings in a system where there is no verification of the complaints being made or appeal for inappropriately bad feedback, I can’t imagine doing business with a company (or its “driver partners”) under conditions where anyone who wanted to could give me a one-star ranking based on my appearance, political affiliation, favorite sports team, favorite food, alma mater, city of origin, city of residence, country of origin, age, height, weight, religion (or lack of it), profession, or reluctance to pay them off in return for a better rating…

Whether this new policy will have any impact on the problems Uber is trying to fix, whatever those might be, remains to be seen, of course. I’ll let you know if I spot any follow-up on this story, but for the moment, the idea of being kicked out of the ridesharing participation pool without warning or chance for appeal for whatever inappropriate (or dishonest) reason somebody feels like dreaming up isn’t making me any more likely to consider using their service…