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How to find your Uber passenger rating

323 points by aaln 12y ago

mrvladnov 12y ago
this is dope, got a 4.8
taroth 12y ago
Nice hack. I imagine using it to see if a driver gave me a good rating or not based on the delta between my new score and old score.
- aaln 12y ago
  lol, that's a great idea.
thrill 12y ago
5.0 (I've never used the service - so it looks like it's all downhill from here...)
chatmasta 12y ago
What kind of details do you think go into this rating? My guess: how long driver waits for you to get in the car, how drunk and annoying you are, how much you tip (do they see this before rating?), how profitable your ride is. I suspect most drivers, like most passengers, give a 5.0 to almost everyone, but dock points for being a dick. It just seems there's no other way to differentiate passengers, since they'll be paying the fee regardless.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  > how much you tip (do they see this before rating?) You don't tip with Uber - 'gratuity' is already included. Regardless, the rate-the-customer screen is seen immediately after stopping the trip
  - chatmasta 12y ago
    Ah my mistake. I haven't used Uber in a while but seemed to remember a screen where you can optionally increase gratuity. I guess I'm confusing it with the Square interface. Who can keep up nowadays...
- enneff 12y ago
  You don't tip Uber drivers.
- korzun 12y ago
  Tip is included in the ride, you can't adjust it. This is not very scientific. I got 4.8 which means absolutely nothing to me.
  - refrigerator 12y ago
    It means nothing to you but remember that you're not supposed to see these - a 4.8 probably means something to the driver.
    - madeofpalk 12y ago
      For what it's worth, drivers with a rating of less than 4.3 or so are booted from the service. I've heard of people in my city having trouble and getting a driver to accept, most probably due to him having a low rating (whereas I never have trouble finding a driver)
      - patio11 12y ago
        Low ratings are not the only reason that could happen. Uber drivers run businesses. They are not universal service taxis (which often flout the universal service rule, to be true). Your request for service includes several non-price elements to it, one of which is your perceived likelihood to be a hassle (and reflected in your star rating), one is the amount of unpaid travel required to get to you, and one is what the driver perceives as likely to be your destination. All else being equal, drivers would prefer to end up in portions of the city with a high density of quality fares (say, an airport, the startup district(s) in SF, etc) as opposed to portions of the city with a low density of quality fares (say, the outer edge of the service area). If drivers make a habit out of taking "bad" trips, their Uber business gets meaningfully less lucrative. Accordingly, expect them to actively avoid "bad" trips. If one's travel patterns routinely result in drivers perceiving you to require "bad" trips, one is going to have a far different experience with Uber relative to a high-frequency no-hassle business traveler.
    - korzun 12y ago
      You can email Uber and ask for your rating. What I meant is that 4.8 without any context means nothing to 'me'. If I knew why somebody rated me below 5 that would be a different story.
- ben1040 12y ago
  I had one driver tell me "if you didn't vomit in my car or swear at me, you get a 5."
madeofpalk 12y ago
This is a lot easier than the Charles MITM proxy I used to intercept the Uber iPhone API calls to determine mine. I feel kind of silly now that I didnt bother checking the web API. I also made a web scraper to get my uber trip details (incl. route driven), save it to JSON and map the trips all at once. http://i.imgur.com/Q1W59rD.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Q1W59rD.jpg. Here's a quick dump of the code https://github.com/joshhunt/uber https://github.com/joshhunt/uber. It's pretty rough and it makes a lot of assumptions (e.g. metric system and AUD). I never really plan on looking at it again, so your milage may vary. I also found their API structure to be quite unusual: They make a call to something like `api.uber.com/` with POST data of something like { url: '/api/user/123123123', method: 'get', location: [lat, long] } and you'll recieve a response back of something like { responseData: { username: 'madeofpalk' ...rest of requested data... }, vehicles: [ ...list of all vehicles and their locations... ] ...other data that wasnt explicitly requested but comes through with every request... } I had never seen this pattern before, and thought it was quite unusual (especially for a 'new hip startup' that uses Python and Node.js). Anyone care to comment on why they may have choosen something like this?
- lambtron 12y ago
  Love to see more of your web scraper. Could make cool tools such as send you a text / notification each time your rating changes.
  - madeofpalk 12y ago
    Here's a quick dump of the code https://github.com/joshhunt/uber https://github.com/joshhunt/uber. It's pretty rough and it makes a lot of assumptions (e.g. metric system and AUD). I never really plan on looking at it again, so your milage may vary.
- lnanek2 12y ago
  doesn't seem that strange to me. in the old SOAP days it was easier to run everything through a set of filters and just have what server code specified by a field. in this case it is pretty clear they sped up requests by returning some generic data every request needed to update the app all at once as well. that's a pretty common requirement. netflix even allows client code to upload server code to pack responses into the least number
mxpxrocks10 12y ago
awesome- this was great. 4.9
philip1209 12y ago
The window.Uber variable has a lot of interesting information, like "isAdmin," data about the last vehicle I rode in (interior color, exterior color, model year, capacity), last driver's phone number, "activeExperiments" which I assume are multivariate tests being run against me, etc
- valgaze 12y ago
  Their whole mapping scheme is pretty neat too on this "mobile" view. They'll use lat/long to determine if the user is in China or not and then pull up google maps or baidu. Beautify this (https://d1a3f4spazzrp4.cloudfront.net/web-mobile-client/js/main-min.b234f1.js https://d1a3f4spazzrp4.cloudfront.net/web-mobile-client/js/m...) then check out line 13185 for loadMap (Map loading resources on # 13094) They also create a gorgeous map "blur" effect when the user is ready to pull the trigger on a ride: http://snag.gy/rlBYX.jpg http://snag.gy/rlBYX.jpg
- cnaut 12y ago
  The experiments data was the most interesting thing I found. I am in the treatment of an experiment involving driver referral emails
deleted 12y ago
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zobzu 12y ago
I've only had a few rides and ive 4.9 (ie someone didnt rate me 5.0). Meh. Then again, I don't feel bad rating drivers because they sell me a service, I'm rating that (it wouldnt even have to include their name - it probably shouldn't. then again I'm european, we seem to have slightly different ethics). I feel bad that they rate us because we don't provide them with anything. That rating is going to be saved, sold and shared eventually.
- jlees 12y ago
  Not necessarily. Drivers rating the passenger is a defence against passengers rating the drivers low, and also a way for Uber to keep quality standards high by stopping 'bad' passengers from using the service.
  - jaredsohn 12y ago
    >Drivers rating the passenger is a defence against passengers rating the drivers low I don't see how this it the case, assuming that drivers don't know what passengers rated them before rating the passenger.
    - tomsthumb 12y ago
      Reciprocal bad ratings from several drivers could indicate a bad passenger who is being fussy etc and trying to take it out on drivers.
      - jaredsohn 12y ago
        But as I say in the GP, I am assuming that the drivers don't know that they are given a low rating prior to giving the passenger a rating.
        arjunnarayan 12y ago
        It's not a low rating that triggers a reciprocal low rating. But an obnoxious and fussy person who gives out low ratings should be discounted if in turn multiple drivers have given him/her low ratings (for being obnoxious).
saalweachter 12y ago
Are there any drivers in the audience who can tell us what different ratings mean?
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  I'm not a driver, but I know enough about Uber to answer this... Drivers are prompted to rate their passenger immeditely after the trip, in the exact same manner as riders rate their driver. Then, when a trip is offered to a driver, they're shown the potential customers rating (and other details), then the driver will choose to accept the job or not
  - flog 12y ago
    I ask a lot of questions: The Uber training, apparently, is that driver's should only ever rate their customers a 5, or a 1. That's it. A customer is either great and a 5, or an asshat and a 1.
    - saryant 12y ago
      Then why didn't Uber make it binary?
      - Goopplesoft 12y ago
        To avoid a db migration ;)
    - dnautics 12y ago
      I don't know who told you that, because that's not what I was told. I drive for Uber, and there aren't specific 'codes' for ratings. On lyft, on the other hand, 5 means good, 4 means needs work, 3 means "don't match us up again" and 2 and 1 mean "recommend deactivation", 1 means "dangerous".
- dangoldin 12y ago
  I spoke with a driver yesterday about it and he says he will basically pick up anyone above a 4. This was in NY so might mean different things in different places and to different people.
blake8086 12y ago
So if you check this after every ride, you'll know exactly what everyone rated you, right?
- jlees 12y ago
  If you keep track of the total number of rides.
  - autarch 12y ago
    And you assume that there's no weighting or discarding of ratings that goes into the average.
- asdfologist 12y ago
  Not necessarily. It shows you only the first decimal.
- baddox 12y ago
  There's no guarantee that it's a simple arithmetic mean. They could weight by recency or do any number of more complicated calculations.
  - Stasis5001 12y ago
    At the very least, if you're like most users who rate between 4 and 5, you can most likely tell if the driver rated you a 5 (rating goes up) or below a 5 (rating goes down). It would take a pretty strange algorithm to violate that. Of course, this only helps if your rating changes at all
    - smeyer 12y ago
      While this is likely to work much of the time, it wouldn't take a particularly strange algorithm to break it. Consider an average rating that is just the arithmetic mean of your last 10 rides. Your rating going up would just mean your most recent rating was better than the rating 11 rides ago that it displaced. If you got a 2 11 rides ago and a 3 on your last ride, your average rating would go up despite getting a below-average rating.
deleted 12y ago
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rdl 12y ago
I don't get why Uber doesn't tell me the exterior color of UberX cars coming to pick me up. I have no idea what a "Nissan Versa" is; knowing it's a blue minivan would be helpful.
- beggi 12y ago
  I agree - it seems like much better design to tell you the color of the car picking you up :)
  - eru 12y ago
    For those people able to see colours.
    - zobzu 12y ago
      So because some people are colorblind or just blind lets not do it. Great logic. I think we should also disable voice calls. Some people are deaf.
      - stevekinney 12y ago
        Agreed. I also think we should remove the displays on phones. Some people are blind.
        wernercd 12y ago
        We should remove this thread because some people can't read. Goodbye internets :(
    - prawn 12y ago
      As opposed to currently giving no indication to anyone, colour-blind users included.
    - diminoten 12y ago
      I think everyone can see colors, even color "blind" people. Those folks just have a hard time distinguishing between shades of particular colors. I don't think anyone's literally living in greyscale.
trekky1700 12y ago
Awesome, happy to find I have a 5/5 too!
finnn 12y ago
I somehow have a 4, the lowest in this thread (that I've seen so far). I wonder what I did, I generally try to be polite to the drivers and I rarely use the service, so I suspect I got one extremely poor rating? I can't imagine when though. Anyway, looks like you can go and pull the token out of the page and just do curl https://m.uber.com/cn https://m.uber.com/cn --data '{"messageType":"PingClient","token":"xxxxx","app":"client"}' | jq .client.ratin to check it programmatically. Could be interesting to have a service detect somehow that you'd just finished a ride and show you the new score (and possibly the change, etc)
- bobbles 12y ago
  Yeah no idea.. Im at 4.5 at the moment, am always standing on the curb for pickup and polite. I've also always ranked drivers as 5 stars. surprising
  - doxcf434 12y ago
    Lol. I always give them 5 too, and tip them additional cash even, and I have a 4.8. Jeezz though crowd. ;-)
    - eridius 12y ago
      Drivers don't know what you rated them.
      - Vik1ng 12y ago
        So a driver can do nothing if someone gives him a low rating for whatever reason as he doesn't even know it happened?
- ldd- 12y ago
  I'm in your boat . . . I have a 4. I've used Uber only once - to help my mom to a doctor's appointment after she broke her hip. I guess we were slow and a bit of a burden . . .
aliston 12y ago
I don't get why this is included in the window.Uber pingData. It seems as though your rating is something that isn't necessary and shouldn't be surfaced client-side. Anyone have some insight into why this data is there in the first place? Is this an accidental leak, some sort of optimization or something else?
- kevinmchugh 12y ago
  No reason to hide it until it becomes a problem. I suspect now that someone's gone to the trouble to surface it, they'll patch it out, but really, it doesn't matter if a tiny percentage of uber-users know what their score is. It's an optimization for their developers. They probably don't want to write a bunch of "if user.driver?"'s in their API responses, so just return all the data all the time and let their clients decide what to show.
- chmars 12y ago
  It's data about me, so I have a right to know and get it anyway – at least under European data privacy laws.
- mpeg 12y ago
  They used to have lots more stuff in their private API; such as the driver's full name, home address and phone number. Probably careless API design.
narsil 12y ago
I wonder if Lyft shares something similar via their API as well. `curl -H "Authorization: fbAccessToken <fb access token>" https://api.lyft.com/users/<lyft https://api.lyft.com/users/<lyft user id>` provides some basic profile, credit card, location and referral information but nothing about ratings. The lyft user ID can be obtained by logging in at www.lyft.com/login and viewing the source.
thejerz 12y ago
I live in Philadelphia and I've taken uber around 50 times. I have a 4.8.
girvo 12y ago
The site now says that the mobile site is unavailable. Perhaps they've taken it down to fix this? I'm in Australia, so maybe that's it.
- aroman 12y ago
  Worked fine for me just now. In the US.
joshwa 12y ago
On my browser, the rating is at window.Uber.Ping.Client.attributes.rating
po 12y ago
My twitter stream is now full of people, some of whom I am sure do not have the skill to evaluate if something is a JavaScript security threat or not, who have copied and pasted a random script they read on the internet into the developer console. Granted, this one is pretty simple and easier to evaluate than most, but still… you really get why Facebook hacked the console to warn people not to do that. edit: This tweet said exactly what I was thinking when I saw all of this. https://twitter.com/s_m_i/status/493609377958723584 https://twitter.com/s_m_i/status/493609377958723584 "Also this uber thing shows folks will copy and paste commands they don’t understand without a second thought if the incentives are right"
- peterwwillis 12y ago
  It's just phishing via web console. You can convince humans to do just about anything for the right incentive.
- brador 12y ago
  What's the worst that could happen?
  - troels 12y ago
    XSS?
  - untog 12y ago
    Ordering an expensive car ride, presumably.
  - joshfraser 12y ago
    Grabs your account information and sends it along to the hacker.
    - chadillac 12y ago
      Yikes... >window.Uber.pingData.client.paymentProfiles [ Object cardExpiration: "2014-03-01T00:00:00+00:00" cardExpirationEpoch: 1393632000000 cardNumber: "[last 4]" cardType: "MasterCard" id: [payment id] useCase: "personal" uuid: "[uuid of payment option from their system]" __proto__: Object , Object accountName: "[acct number]" billingCountryIso2: "US" billingZip: "[billing zip]" cardExpiration: "2017-09-01T00:00:00+00:00" cardExpirationEpoch: 1504224000000 cardNumber: "[last 4]" cardType: "Visa" id: [payment id] tokenType: "braintree" useCase: "personal" uuid: "[uuid of payment option from their system]" __proto__: Object ]
schnaars 12y ago
I've just asked my driver and they tell you.
- chandraonline 12y ago
  Exactly this. I didn't know this was such a big secret. In one of the rides, I happened to be in an Uber that I had taken before and the driver remarked "Hey! you have dropped down from 5 to 4.9". And I exactly remember that just a few days before I shared a ride with a friend , and he was being a dick to the driver unnecessarily.
sunasra 12y ago
dont they show officially?
rco8786 12y ago
4.9! I use uber multiple time per week and have for years. So I guess I'm not an asshole.
- tlrobinson 12y ago
  4.9 here too. I've been using them on average at least once a week since June 2010.
swang 12y ago
I wonder if `window.Uber.pingData.client.activeExperiments` is the test groups you're currently in at the moment...
the_economist 12y ago
I've been aware of my Uber passenger rating for about a year. When I first found out about it, my rating was a 4.9. Once I realized that I was being rated, I worked really hard to be the perfect passenger. I had my rating up to a 5.0 for a few months. Then I got lazy about being perfect and it has since dropped to a 4.8.
- onedev 12y ago
  What things did you do to be "the perfect passenger"?
  - nulltype 12y ago
    * Complimented the driver on his/her looks * Brought cookies * Always punctual * Provided shoulder to cry on when required
    - marvin 12y ago
      This is in fact sarcasm, right? Because I would think that following common courtesy and actually paying for the service you are receiving should be enough ;) The idea that you have to put in effort to be the perfect customer of a service you are paying for is ridiculous.
burntcookie90 12y ago
this is also visible if you view the source on m.uber.com, ctrl-f for "rating".
- acanals 12y ago
  no, it's not.
  - burntcookie90 12y ago
    It was in the place of this <script> window.Uber = { development: false, jswLocale: 'en_US', pingData: false, version: '3.0.0' }; </script>
zoba 12y ago
Or, alternatively, you can just ask your Uber driver when you get in the car. Much easier, and likely won't be "fixed" by uber for a long time.
- antsar 12y ago
  Seems like they fixed it already, actually. http://ant.sr/rating-undefined.png http://ant.sr/rating-undefined.png
politician 12y ago
I have absolutely zero interest in my Uber passenger rating. If they decide to start being ridiculous, I'll decide to start taking cabs again -- at least the cabbies generally have a clue about how to get to places, and don't bother with questions about "what route would you like me to take you on". The fastest route, thanks.
- DINKDINK 12y ago
  Uber policy dictated, at least at one point, to ask customers if they "had a prefered route"
  - pimlottc 12y ago
    Really!? I always find it very annoying to be asked that.
    - jrockway 12y ago
      "Nope, up to you." Not really worth being annoyed about.
      - politician 12y ago
        Well, remember that you're paying by the mile or minute. Unless you want to rack up additional charges, I'd suggest asking for either the shortest or fastest route. That's why I don't like the preferred route question. Do I want to pay more for a longer trip? No.
        aetherson 12y ago
        From my experience with cab drivers (not Uber drivers), the idea is supposed to be that if you do not have a preferred route, the driver takes the most efficient route based on some kind of gestalt between lowest cost and fastest service. The deal is, some passengers are convinced they know the best route from point A to point B, and will accuse drivers of trying to con them if they don't take that route. So if the passenger has a route they want to take, even if the route is stupid, you just shut up and do that. Otherwise, you take the best route. In theory, of course. I have no doubt that there exist cab drivers and Uber drivers who run up the meter. Hopefully, Uber does some monitoring of routes and catches at least egregious cases.
aaln 12y ago
We are on reddit! http://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/2bx5dp/how_to_find_your_uber_passenger_rating/ http://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/2bx5dp/how_to_fin...
yskchu 12y ago
Looks like they closed it :-/ window.Uber.pingData.client.firstName, lastName, email all work, but rating is now "undefined".
- akavi 12y ago
  Check: Uber.Ping.attributes.client.rating That's where I was able to find it.
- mfkp 12y ago
  Mine still worked, just tried it. Maybe you don't have a rating?
- antongm 12y ago
  Mine is too. Not sure what to do here. I use Uber a lot...I can't not have a rating.
deleted 12y ago
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lawrencegs 12y ago
I wonder if this reverse-rating system is only for US. Even though I'm from US, I had only get the chance to use it abroad (Jakarta). And when I check it, my rating is null. Is it something to do with the fact that Uber driver in Jakarta are actually professional car-rental driver?
aioprisan 12y ago
There's a lot of useful data in window.Uber.pingData.client. For instance, I can see that my credit card profile is on braintree.
rlu 12y ago
Does anyone know why Uber doesn't easily just give you your own rating? If I know my rating is low then I know I should work on improving it if I want to continue using Uber... Seems kind of like a win-win-win for all three parties (Uber, driver, myself)
- ericrav 12y ago
  I would think some people who got low scores would become disillusioned with the service, blaming the service rather than seeing any fault with themselves. Then being offended, they would be less likely to use the service or harbor negative feelings towards it.
  - peteretep 12y ago
    But but but ... What's actually going to happen is that you're going to get degraded service from Uber without knowing why. You're never going to get a cab in the quoted time, because drivers won't pick you up, and you'll assume it's the same for everyone, tell your friends how slow Uber is ... I would say the disillusionment, blame, offence, etc are going to be aggravated by consistently slow service.
michaeldwan 12y ago
I can't think of a single reason the user rating is hidden from the user. If anything, knowing your score is low would help explain why rides are often unavailable.
Zhenya 12y ago
Game's over - result is now null.
- gravity13 12y ago
  Now I'll just need to figure it out the old fashioned way and sleep with an Uber employee :(
hellbreakslose 12y ago
Ok thats good if I was a taxi driver... but I aint I r a developer, what am i supposed to do with this crap u posting?
moogoo 12y ago
Uber is a hoax
corylehey 12y ago
even easier method, ask your next Uber driver what your rating is.
korzun 12y ago
I just want to point out that customer support will be happy to give you your rating. Just ask.
jwilliams 12y ago
Hmm. Suspect there is a bug with this - All my ratings are five, besides a handful of zeroes. At least a couple of the zeroes I remember being perfectly amicable rides (I mean, I'd assume something extreme is necessary to get a zero)... My suspicion is that zero is equivalent to unrated, so shouldn't be in the sum?

323 points by aaln 12y ago

this is dope, got a 4.8

Nice hack. I imagine using it to see if a driver gave me a good rating or not based on the delta between my new score and old score.

aaln 12y ago
lol, that's a great idea.

thrill 12y ago

5.0 (I've never used the service - so it looks like it's all downhill from here...)

chatmasta 12y ago

What kind of details do you think go into this rating? My guess: how long driver waits for you to get in the car, how drunk and annoying you are, how much you tip (do they see this before rating?), how profitable your ride is. I suspect most drivers, like most passengers, give a 5.0 to almost everyone, but dock points for being a dick. It just seems there's no other way to differentiate passengers, since they'll be paying the fee regardless.

madeofpalk 12y ago
> how much you tip (do they see this before rating?) You don't tip with Uber - 'gratuity' is already included. Regardless, the rate-the-customer screen is seen immediately after stopping the trip
- chatmasta 12y ago
  Ah my mistake. I haven't used Uber in a while but seemed to remember a screen where you can optionally increase gratuity. I guess I'm confusing it with the Square interface. Who can keep up nowadays...
enneff 12y ago
You don't tip Uber drivers.
korzun 12y ago
Tip is included in the ride, you can't adjust it. This is not very scientific. I got 4.8 which means absolutely nothing to me.
- refrigerator 12y ago
  It means nothing to you but remember that you're not supposed to see these - a 4.8 probably means something to the driver.
  - madeofpalk 12y ago
    For what it's worth, drivers with a rating of less than 4.3 or so are booted from the service. I've heard of people in my city having trouble and getting a driver to accept, most probably due to him having a low rating (whereas I never have trouble finding a driver)
    - patio11 12y ago
      Low ratings are not the only reason that could happen. Uber drivers run businesses. They are not universal service taxis (which often flout the universal service rule, to be true). Your request for service includes several non-price elements to it, one of which is your perceived likelihood to be a hassle (and reflected in your star rating), one is the amount of unpaid travel required to get to you, and one is what the driver perceives as likely to be your destination. All else being equal, drivers would prefer to end up in portions of the city with a high density of quality fares (say, an airport, the startup district(s) in SF, etc) as opposed to portions of the city with a low density of quality fares (say, the outer edge of the service area). If drivers make a habit out of taking "bad" trips, their Uber business gets meaningfully less lucrative. Accordingly, expect them to actively avoid "bad" trips. If one's travel patterns routinely result in drivers perceiving you to require "bad" trips, one is going to have a far different experience with Uber relative to a high-frequency no-hassle business traveler.
  - korzun 12y ago
    You can email Uber and ask for your rating. What I meant is that 4.8 without any context means nothing to 'me'. If I knew why somebody rated me below 5 that would be a different story.
ben1040 12y ago
I had one driver tell me "if you didn't vomit in my car or swear at me, you get a 5."

madeofpalk 12y ago

This is a lot easier than the Charles MITM proxy I used to intercept the Uber iPhone API calls to determine mine. I feel kind of silly now that I didnt bother checking the web API. I also made a web scraper to get my uber trip details (incl. route driven), save it to JSON and map the trips all at once. http://i.imgur.com/Q1W59rD.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Q1W59rD.jpg. Here's a quick dump of the code https://github.com/joshhunt/uber https://github.com/joshhunt/uber. It's pretty rough and it makes a lot of assumptions (e.g. metric system and AUD). I never really plan on looking at it again, so your milage may vary. I also found their API structure to be quite unusual: They make a call to something like `api.uber.com/` with POST data of something like { url: '/api/user/123123123', method: 'get', location: [lat, long] } and you'll recieve a response back of something like { responseData: { username: 'madeofpalk' ...rest of requested data... }, vehicles: [ ...list of all vehicles and their locations... ] ...other data that wasnt explicitly requested but comes through with every request... } I had never seen this pattern before, and thought it was quite unusual (especially for a 'new hip startup' that uses Python and Node.js). Anyone care to comment on why they may have choosen something like this?

lambtron 12y ago
Love to see more of your web scraper. Could make cool tools such as send you a text / notification each time your rating changes.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  Here's a quick dump of the code https://github.com/joshhunt/uber https://github.com/joshhunt/uber. It's pretty rough and it makes a lot of assumptions (e.g. metric system and AUD). I never really plan on looking at it again, so your milage may vary.
lnanek2 12y ago
doesn't seem that strange to me. in the old SOAP days it was easier to run everything through a set of filters and just have what server code specified by a field. in this case it is pretty clear they sped up requests by returning some generic data every request needed to update the app all at once as well. that's a pretty common requirement. netflix even allows client code to upload server code to pack responses into the least number

mxpxrocks10 12y ago

awesome- this was great. 4.9

philip1209 12y ago

The window.Uber variable has a lot of interesting information, like "isAdmin," data about the last vehicle I rode in (interior color, exterior color, model year, capacity), last driver's phone number, "activeExperiments" which I assume are multivariate tests being run against me, etc

valgaze 12y ago
Their whole mapping scheme is pretty neat too on this "mobile" view. They'll use lat/long to determine if the user is in China or not and then pull up google maps or baidu. Beautify this (https://d1a3f4spazzrp4.cloudfront.net/web-mobile-client/js/main-min.b234f1.js https://d1a3f4spazzrp4.cloudfront.net/web-mobile-client/js/m...) then check out line 13185 for loadMap (Map loading resources on # 13094) They also create a gorgeous map "blur" effect when the user is ready to pull the trigger on a ride: http://snag.gy/rlBYX.jpg http://snag.gy/rlBYX.jpg
cnaut 12y ago
The experiments data was the most interesting thing I found. I am in the treatment of an experiment involving driver referral emails

deleted 12y ago

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zobzu 12y ago

I've only had a few rides and ive 4.9 (ie someone didnt rate me 5.0). Meh. Then again, I don't feel bad rating drivers because they sell me a service, I'm rating that (it wouldnt even have to include their name - it probably shouldn't. then again I'm european, we seem to have slightly different ethics). I feel bad that they rate us because we don't provide them with anything. That rating is going to be saved, sold and shared eventually.

jlees 12y ago
Not necessarily. Drivers rating the passenger is a defence against passengers rating the drivers low, and also a way for Uber to keep quality standards high by stopping 'bad' passengers from using the service.
- jaredsohn 12y ago
  >Drivers rating the passenger is a defence against passengers rating the drivers low I don't see how this it the case, assuming that drivers don't know what passengers rated them before rating the passenger.
  - tomsthumb 12y ago
    Reciprocal bad ratings from several drivers could indicate a bad passenger who is being fussy etc and trying to take it out on drivers.
    - jaredsohn 12y ago
      But as I say in the GP, I am assuming that the drivers don't know that they are given a low rating prior to giving the passenger a rating.
      - arjunnarayan 12y ago
        It's not a low rating that triggers a reciprocal low rating. But an obnoxious and fussy person who gives out low ratings should be discounted if in turn multiple drivers have given him/her low ratings (for being obnoxious).

saalweachter 12y ago

Are there any drivers in the audience who can tell us what different ratings mean?

madeofpalk 12y ago
I'm not a driver, but I know enough about Uber to answer this... Drivers are prompted to rate their passenger immeditely after the trip, in the exact same manner as riders rate their driver. Then, when a trip is offered to a driver, they're shown the potential customers rating (and other details), then the driver will choose to accept the job or not
- flog 12y ago
  I ask a lot of questions: The Uber training, apparently, is that driver's should only ever rate their customers a 5, or a 1. That's it. A customer is either great and a 5, or an asshat and a 1.
  - saryant 12y ago
    Then why didn't Uber make it binary?
    - Goopplesoft 12y ago
      To avoid a db migration ;)
  - dnautics 12y ago
    I don't know who told you that, because that's not what I was told. I drive for Uber, and there aren't specific 'codes' for ratings. On lyft, on the other hand, 5 means good, 4 means needs work, 3 means "don't match us up again" and 2 and 1 mean "recommend deactivation", 1 means "dangerous".
dangoldin 12y ago
I spoke with a driver yesterday about it and he says he will basically pick up anyone above a 4. This was in NY so might mean different things in different places and to different people.

blake8086 12y ago

So if you check this after every ride, you'll know exactly what everyone rated you, right?

jlees 12y ago
If you keep track of the total number of rides.
- autarch 12y ago
  And you assume that there's no weighting or discarding of ratings that goes into the average.
asdfologist 12y ago
Not necessarily. It shows you only the first decimal.
baddox 12y ago
There's no guarantee that it's a simple arithmetic mean. They could weight by recency or do any number of more complicated calculations.
- Stasis5001 12y ago
  At the very least, if you're like most users who rate between 4 and 5, you can most likely tell if the driver rated you a 5 (rating goes up) or below a 5 (rating goes down). It would take a pretty strange algorithm to violate that. Of course, this only helps if your rating changes at all
  - smeyer 12y ago
    While this is likely to work much of the time, it wouldn't take a particularly strange algorithm to break it. Consider an average rating that is just the arithmetic mean of your last 10 rides. Your rating going up would just mean your most recent rating was better than the rating 11 rides ago that it displaced. If you got a 2 11 rides ago and a 3 on your last ride, your average rating would go up despite getting a below-average rating.

deleted 12y ago

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rdl 12y ago

I don't get why Uber doesn't tell me the exterior color of UberX cars coming to pick me up. I have no idea what a "Nissan Versa" is; knowing it's a blue minivan would be helpful.

beggi 12y ago
I agree - it seems like much better design to tell you the color of the car picking you up :)
- eru 12y ago
  For those people able to see colours.
  - zobzu 12y ago
    So because some people are colorblind or just blind lets not do it. Great logic. I think we should also disable voice calls. Some people are deaf.
    - stevekinney 12y ago
      Agreed. I also think we should remove the displays on phones. Some people are blind.
      - wernercd 12y ago
        We should remove this thread because some people can't read. Goodbye internets :(
  - prawn 12y ago
    As opposed to currently giving no indication to anyone, colour-blind users included.
  - diminoten 12y ago
    I think everyone can see colors, even color "blind" people. Those folks just have a hard time distinguishing between shades of particular colors. I don't think anyone's literally living in greyscale.

trekky1700 12y ago

Awesome, happy to find I have a 5/5 too!

finnn 12y ago

I somehow have a 4, the lowest in this thread (that I've seen so far). I wonder what I did, I generally try to be polite to the drivers and I rarely use the service, so I suspect I got one extremely poor rating? I can't imagine when though. Anyway, looks like you can go and pull the token out of the page and just do curl https://m.uber.com/cn https://m.uber.com/cn --data '{"messageType":"PingClient","token":"xxxxx","app":"client"}' | jq .client.ratin to check it programmatically. Could be interesting to have a service detect somehow that you'd just finished a ride and show you the new score (and possibly the change, etc)

bobbles 12y ago
Yeah no idea.. Im at 4.5 at the moment, am always standing on the curb for pickup and polite. I've also always ranked drivers as 5 stars. surprising
- doxcf434 12y ago
  Lol. I always give them 5 too, and tip them additional cash even, and I have a 4.8. Jeezz though crowd. ;-)
  - eridius 12y ago
    Drivers don't know what you rated them.
    - Vik1ng 12y ago
      So a driver can do nothing if someone gives him a low rating for whatever reason as he doesn't even know it happened?
ldd- 12y ago
I'm in your boat . . . I have a 4. I've used Uber only once - to help my mom to a doctor's appointment after she broke her hip. I guess we were slow and a bit of a burden . . .

aliston 12y ago

I don't get why this is included in the window.Uber pingData. It seems as though your rating is something that isn't necessary and shouldn't be surfaced client-side. Anyone have some insight into why this data is there in the first place? Is this an accidental leak, some sort of optimization or something else?

kevinmchugh 12y ago
No reason to hide it until it becomes a problem. I suspect now that someone's gone to the trouble to surface it, they'll patch it out, but really, it doesn't matter if a tiny percentage of uber-users know what their score is. It's an optimization for their developers. They probably don't want to write a bunch of "if user.driver?"'s in their API responses, so just return all the data all the time and let their clients decide what to show.
chmars 12y ago
It's data about me, so I have a right to know and get it anyway – at least under European data privacy laws.
mpeg 12y ago
They used to have lots more stuff in their private API; such as the driver's full name, home address and phone number. Probably careless API design.

narsil 12y ago

I wonder if Lyft shares something similar via their API as well. `curl -H "Authorization: fbAccessToken <fb access token>" https://api.lyft.com/users/<lyft https://api.lyft.com/users/<lyft user id>` provides some basic profile, credit card, location and referral information but nothing about ratings. The lyft user ID can be obtained by logging in at www.lyft.com/login and viewing the source.

thejerz 12y ago

I live in Philadelphia and I've taken uber around 50 times. I have a 4.8.

girvo 12y ago

The site now says that the mobile site is unavailable. Perhaps they've taken it down to fix this? I'm in Australia, so maybe that's it.

aroman 12y ago
Worked fine for me just now. In the US.

joshwa 12y ago

On my browser, the rating is at window.Uber.Ping.Client.attributes.rating

po 12y ago

My twitter stream is now full of people, some of whom I am sure do not have the skill to evaluate if something is a JavaScript security threat or not, who have copied and pasted a random script they read on the internet into the developer console. Granted, this one is pretty simple and easier to evaluate than most, but still… you really get why Facebook hacked the console to warn people not to do that. edit: This tweet said exactly what I was thinking when I saw all of this. https://twitter.com/s_m_i/status/493609377958723584 https://twitter.com/s_m_i/status/493609377958723584 "Also this uber thing shows folks will copy and paste commands they don’t understand without a second thought if the incentives are right"

peterwwillis 12y ago
It's just phishing via web console. You can convince humans to do just about anything for the right incentive.
brador 12y ago
What's the worst that could happen?
- troels 12y ago
  XSS?
- untog 12y ago
  Ordering an expensive car ride, presumably.
- joshfraser 12y ago
  Grabs your account information and sends it along to the hacker.
  - chadillac 12y ago
    Yikes... >window.Uber.pingData.client.paymentProfiles [ Object cardExpiration: "2014-03-01T00:00:00+00:00" cardExpirationEpoch: 1393632000000 cardNumber: "[last 4]" cardType: "MasterCard" id: [payment id] useCase: "personal" uuid: "[uuid of payment option from their system]" __proto__: Object , Object accountName: "[acct number]" billingCountryIso2: "US" billingZip: "[billing zip]" cardExpiration: "2017-09-01T00:00:00+00:00" cardExpirationEpoch: 1504224000000 cardNumber: "[last 4]" cardType: "Visa" id: [payment id] tokenType: "braintree" useCase: "personal" uuid: "[uuid of payment option from their system]" __proto__: Object ]

schnaars 12y ago

I've just asked my driver and they tell you.

chandraonline 12y ago
Exactly this. I didn't know this was such a big secret. In one of the rides, I happened to be in an Uber that I had taken before and the driver remarked "Hey! you have dropped down from 5 to 4.9". And I exactly remember that just a few days before I shared a ride with a friend , and he was being a dick to the driver unnecessarily.

sunasra 12y ago

dont they show officially?

rco8786 12y ago

4.9! I use uber multiple time per week and have for years. So I guess I'm not an asshole.

tlrobinson 12y ago
4.9 here too. I've been using them on average at least once a week since June 2010.

swang 12y ago

I wonder if `window.Uber.pingData.client.activeExperiments` is the test groups you're currently in at the moment...

the_economist 12y ago

I've been aware of my Uber passenger rating for about a year. When I first found out about it, my rating was a 4.9. Once I realized that I was being rated, I worked really hard to be the perfect passenger. I had my rating up to a 5.0 for a few months. Then I got lazy about being perfect and it has since dropped to a 4.8.

onedev 12y ago
What things did you do to be "the perfect passenger"?
- nulltype 12y ago
  * Complimented the driver on his/her looks * Brought cookies * Always punctual * Provided shoulder to cry on when required
  - marvin 12y ago
    This is in fact sarcasm, right? Because I would think that following common courtesy and actually paying for the service you are receiving should be enough ;) The idea that you have to put in effort to be the perfect customer of a service you are paying for is ridiculous.

burntcookie90 12y ago

this is also visible if you view the source on m.uber.com, ctrl-f for "rating".

acanals 12y ago
no, it's not.
- burntcookie90 12y ago
  It was in the place of this <script> window.Uber = { development: false, jswLocale: 'en_US', pingData: false, version: '3.0.0' }; </script>

zoba 12y ago

Or, alternatively, you can just ask your Uber driver when you get in the car. Much easier, and likely won't be "fixed" by uber for a long time.

antsar 12y ago
Seems like they fixed it already, actually. http://ant.sr/rating-undefined.png http://ant.sr/rating-undefined.png

politician 12y ago

I have absolutely zero interest in my Uber passenger rating. If they decide to start being ridiculous, I'll decide to start taking cabs again -- at least the cabbies generally have a clue about how to get to places, and don't bother with questions about "what route would you like me to take you on". The fastest route, thanks.

DINKDINK 12y ago
Uber policy dictated, at least at one point, to ask customers if they "had a prefered route"
- pimlottc 12y ago
  Really!? I always find it very annoying to be asked that.
  - jrockway 12y ago
    "Nope, up to you." Not really worth being annoyed about.
    - politician 12y ago
      Well, remember that you're paying by the mile or minute. Unless you want to rack up additional charges, I'd suggest asking for either the shortest or fastest route. That's why I don't like the preferred route question. Do I want to pay more for a longer trip? No.
      - aetherson 12y ago
        From my experience with cab drivers (not Uber drivers), the idea is supposed to be that if you do not have a preferred route, the driver takes the most efficient route based on some kind of gestalt between lowest cost and fastest service. The deal is, some passengers are convinced they know the best route from point A to point B, and will accuse drivers of trying to con them if they don't take that route. So if the passenger has a route they want to take, even if the route is stupid, you just shut up and do that. Otherwise, you take the best route. In theory, of course. I have no doubt that there exist cab drivers and Uber drivers who run up the meter. Hopefully, Uber does some monitoring of routes and catches at least egregious cases.

aaln 12y ago

We are on reddit! http://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/2bx5dp/how_to_find_your_uber_passenger_rating/ http://www.reddit.com/r/lifehacks/comments/2bx5dp/how_to_fin...

yskchu 12y ago

Looks like they closed it :-/ window.Uber.pingData.client.firstName, lastName, email all work, but rating is now "undefined".

akavi 12y ago
Check: Uber.Ping.attributes.client.rating That's where I was able to find it.
mfkp 12y ago
Mine still worked, just tried it. Maybe you don't have a rating?
antongm 12y ago
Mine is too. Not sure what to do here. I use Uber a lot...I can't not have a rating.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

lawrencegs 12y ago

I wonder if this reverse-rating system is only for US. Even though I'm from US, I had only get the chance to use it abroad (Jakarta). And when I check it, my rating is null. Is it something to do with the fact that Uber driver in Jakarta are actually professional car-rental driver?

aioprisan 12y ago

There's a lot of useful data in window.Uber.pingData.client. For instance, I can see that my credit card profile is on braintree.

rlu 12y ago

Does anyone know why Uber doesn't easily just give you your own rating? If I know my rating is low then I know I should work on improving it if I want to continue using Uber... Seems kind of like a win-win-win for all three parties (Uber, driver, myself)

ericrav 12y ago
I would think some people who got low scores would become disillusioned with the service, blaming the service rather than seeing any fault with themselves. Then being offended, they would be less likely to use the service or harbor negative feelings towards it.
- peteretep 12y ago
  But but but ... What's actually going to happen is that you're going to get degraded service from Uber without knowing why. You're never going to get a cab in the quoted time, because drivers won't pick you up, and you'll assume it's the same for everyone, tell your friends how slow Uber is ... I would say the disillusionment, blame, offence, etc are going to be aggravated by consistently slow service.

michaeldwan 12y ago

I can't think of a single reason the user rating is hidden from the user. If anything, knowing your score is low would help explain why rides are often unavailable.

Zhenya 12y ago

Game's over - result is now null.

gravity13 12y ago
Now I'll just need to figure it out the old fashioned way and sleep with an Uber employee :(

hellbreakslose 12y ago

Ok thats good if I was a taxi driver... but I aint I r a developer, what am i supposed to do with this crap u posting?

moogoo 12y ago

Uber is a hoax

corylehey 12y ago

even easier method, ask your next Uber driver what your rating is.

korzun 12y ago

I just want to point out that customer support will be happy to give you your rating. Just ask.

jwilliams 12y ago

Hmm. Suspect there is a bug with this - All my ratings are five, besides a handful of zeroes. At least a couple of the zeroes I remember being perfectly amicable rides (I mean, I'd assume something extreme is necessary to get a zero)... My suspicion is that zero is equivalent to unrated, so shouldn't be in the sum?