Ride Sharing Services: It Just Keeps Getting Better!
We have had quite a few posts about Uber, Lyft and other ride-sharing services, but they just keep popping up in the news, and the wrinkles are always unexpected and fascinating. Saturday’s New York Times reported that the companies allow drivers to rate their passengers. If you get a bad rating, you’d better hail a cab or [shudder] take public transportation. It’s not such a strange thing to be rated by a service-provider you pay, the Times point out. After all, students pay tuition to attend law school, and yet we grade them. But of course, students know that going in. Probably most passengers don’t expect to be rated. What a wonderful century we inhabit — so many opportunities to pass judgment on perfect strangers!
And what sort of behavior will get you a bad rating? It may be simple things like asking the driver to turn the heat/air conditioning/radio up or down. One rider expressed her angst about being thought insensitive or lacking in interpersonal skills if she took a call or did work while riding. Even Uber’s CEO, one of the few riders with access to his own rating, was downgraded from five stars as a passenger to four. He attributes the lackluster reviews to work stress. He blames himself. “I was not as courteous as I should have been.” He should watch out. You can be banned from Uber, which siad in a blog post that it only wants to serve “the most respectful riders.”
The article suggests that two-way review systems are inevitable, even though they may be inaccurate. A comparison of a site that allowed two-way reviews with one that allowed only one-way review found that the two-way system leads to far more positive reviews.
What goes around comes around. I would not put it past these companies to monitor their drivers’ ratings of passengers. The company may find its own ways to retaliate against drivers who complain about passengers who do nothing more offensive than behaving like busy people who are getting a ride from a stranger as part of a commercial transaction.