This seems like a complete inversion of the service incentives. The initial reason to use Uber was huge convenience and service quality. Uber Lux/Exec (or whate

This seems like a complete inversion of the service incentives. The initial reason to use Uber was huge convenience and service quality. Uber Lux/Exec (or whatever they call it now) offered a vastly superior service to taxis for a ~20% price increase. Service is kept honest via ratings, prices are acceptable for that quality increase. Drivers were polite and looked after you (no music, water etc.). Uber X then comes in to compete with mainstream taxis (fair enough) but overall quality drops across the entire service. Now you get rated (for sitting?) and must compete with other passengers on tipping, whilst service quality continues to drop. Not tipping for bad service lowers your rating dramatically, so you have to tip for mediocre/bad service and sneak in a bad rating, which increasingly has little effect. It used to be that I could not find an Uber with less than 4.8, because you couldn't last like that as a driver. I now regularly getting mediocre service from ~4.5. My immediate feeling is that I should stop using Uber almost completely, risk normal taxis ripping me off occasionally (knowing your city helps) and only use Uber when really needed (no taxis around, urgent etc), tipping then.