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> below 4.7 and you go on probation This brings up a related point. For a typical Uber ride, do you give the driver 3-stars or 5-stars? I usually give 5-stars
by pud 14y ago
> below 4.7 and you go on probation
This brings up a related point. For a typical Uber ride, do you give the driver 3-stars or 5-stars?
I usually give 5-stars when a ride goes smoothly. But I know people who default to 3-stars (average) unless the driver goes out of his way & is exceptional.
I've considered switching my default to 4-stars for a nice ride, leaving me a 1-star buffer for exceptional service. But using that scale, I wouldn't want a 4.7 driver to get dinged.
- eridius 14y agoYou know people use 3-star average for Uber? That surprises me. One of my earlier Uber rides I decided to go ahead and rate 3 stars because I felt it was a fairly average ride. Pretty quickly I got contacted by someone at Uber who wanted to ask me what was wrong with my ride. When I explained that I felt it was merely average, they told me a simplistic version of what jamiequint said, that they only want to work with the best drivers and therefore 3 isn't an average rating, it's actually a bad rating.
- naner 14y agoThen they shouldn't use ambiguous stars for a rating system.
- samstave 14y agoAgreed, they should have a colored scale from: red -- poor -- 0% yellow -- ok -- 5% green -- fine -- 10% blue -- great -- 15% gold -- superb -- 20% Attach a tip % to each (perhaps)
- eridius 14y agoThat would incentivize riders to rate their drivers lower.
- samstave 14y agoThen don't attach tips, though maybe this would allow for more accurate reviews? I always give 5 stars, because its easy and all rides have been great. Only one driver though, provided me with water bottles and candy. That was a superb experience. Maybe the only superb one while the rest were fine.
- tatsuke95 14y agoReally? The "upper-class" people who use Uber (people who are using their expensive smart phones to order the cab, people like ourselves) are averse to tipping well when the service is great? That's disgraceful.
- pclark 14y agoI think they should just make reviews less than 3 stars require a text explanation.
- chadillac83 14y agoThis. We've implemented this on a number of social networks fit reporting nefarious users. Scammers, spammers, etc. to help the community. We found that if a user can report a user with an easy click we were flooded with false positives. Users reporting one another for petty reasons like not replying to messages. The women would report other women seemingly out of spite. We later added an input box that requires a short explanation. The reporting abuse dropped through the floor, and the quality of the feedback from users is far better. Requiring a short explanation will def put the average rating to 4.
- Aloisius 14y agoThey do. I had a driver who took me on the most roundabout way possible to get to my office. I rated him one star. It popped up a text field entry, I said what happened and Uber credited me the difference.
- baddox 14y agoYou make it sound like a 5-star rating system is a novel thing, but it's used all over the Internet, and I think most people have a pretty reasonable understanding of the system.
- waterlesscloud 14y agoYes, and they understand 3 stars is a decent review.
- baddox 14y agoI don't think so. I certainly interpret 3 stars on Yelp or Amazon as below average.
- justincormack 14y agoI think it is cultural, so not clear there is a real "understanding".
- signed0 14y agoIf they are telling riders this, then everyone will end up giving drivers a 5 unless they had a bad experience. This artificially inflates every score such that a 5 score ends lumping in the exceptional drivers with the slightly above average.
- citricsquid 14y agoYoutube did a pretty interesting article on how they were switching to a thumbs system (like or dislike) after using stars for years and finding people either used 1 or 5. Found it, not as interesting as I recall: http://youtube-global.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/five-stars-dominate-ratings.html http://youtube-global.blogspot.co.uk/2009/09/five-stars-domi...
- larrys 14y ago"I felt it was a fairly average ride." I'm not a uber user (have no need for it). Could you detail what factors to you makes a ride "average" or "good" or "great" etc?
- eridius 14y agoIt's all subjective, so it's hard to detail, but a good Uber ride is a far more enjoyable experience than, say, a taxi ride. The driver is courteous and knowledgable, receptive to conversation if I desire it, and quiet if not. The car is in good condition, with plenty of room, typically with some bottled water available if I'm thirsty. Shows up quickly, easy to find. Driver knows how to get where I want and gets me there in a reasonable amount of time. Etc. etc.
- dunsudu 14y agoExcept for the water, isn't that exactly what you'd expect from a taxi?
- nathantotten 14y agoHave you ever been in a taxi? The above is what I expect from Uber. I only hope to make it to my destination alive in the average taxi.
- yen223 14y agoTherein lies the problem with 5-star ratings. It's entirely subjective. There's no standard as to what makes an experience a 4-star one instead of a 2-star one. Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/937/ http://xkcd.com/937/ Personally, I think the "thumbs-up/thumbs-down" system does a better job.
- wwosik 14y agoIs it an American phenomenon? In Europe I expect a taxi driver to be quick to turn up, helpful and knowledgeable about the destination. Granted, I don't expect water.
- nilkn 14y agoDear lord, that's a bad rating system. They should just replace the stars with words. "Average" means average, "Outstanding" means outstanding, etc.
- mietek 14y agoIndeed. Relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1098/ http://xkcd.com/1098/
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- PKop 14y agoDoesn't it mostly matter that the aggregate ratings for each driver will rank them relative to their peers? Thus the threshold for which drivers are let go is arbitrary and only really correlates with the demand Uber has for drivers. In other words, over time the highest rated drivers will remain employed, the worst won't.
- samstave 14y agoI've never given less than 5 stars. Every ride I have had with Uber has been perfect - aside from the cost :)
- bcoates 14y agoI hope they aren't comparing ratings directly for exactly this reason. They should be using something like z-scores where you measure every rating in standard deviation from the mean for that rater.
- danmaz74 14y agoIf they want to use a star system, this is the way to go.
- damncabbage 14y agoTelstra (Australian Telco) internally uses a number rating for B2B sales and sales-support teams, and point inflation has made it useless. The Sales guys end up needing to explain to the customers what the numbers really mean; 8/10 was being left for "great service", but that qualified as a failure by the internal metrics. (To make it even worse, the management accidentally let the sales meet their target once; some people actually got their bonuses, so upstairs bumped the minimum target score again.)
- nikcub 14y ago> But I know people who default to 3-stars (average) You'd think they would be normalizing that data against that users average ratings, rather than as a raw score. For eg. is this rating plus or minus this users average rating.
- robryan 14y agoSimilar to Amazon, we get people who give a 3/5 and write "good" or similar as a comment. Amazon treats 3 or below as a negative.