I had routinely given Uber drivers ratings between 3-5 stars (good, better, best), because service was always good enough that I didn't feel a need to dip lower

I had routinely given Uber drivers ratings between 3-5 stars (good, better, best), because service was always good enough that I didn't feel a need to dip lower. Then a driver mentioned that if a passenger gave him less than 5 stars, he would have been better off not taking the fare at all. That was pretty eye opening: that a $30+ fare wasn't worth being rated a 4, because of the future lost business that results from having a 4.8 average instead of a 4.9. This was a few years ago, before Uber X launched. So even then, Uber had limited their scale (which provides 50 ratings points) such that only the top 5 ratings were acceptable. I think it has only tightened since then, I rarely see a driver below 4.8 at all. Now I always give drivers a 5 unless something truly unacceptable happens, in which case I file a complaint with Uber. The ratings feedback loop has been completely broken for me. It's ridiculous, and I don't see how they get the results they want when people have no idea what each rating number is supposed to mean. Some people start at 5 and remove points for issues. Some people start at 3 and only go up if you've gone beyond the call of duty. The only thing that makes sense is an up / down vote, when the scale can't be agreed upon by all participants. I suppose that the driver -> passenger ratings might actually work as intended, since the drivers are presumably well aware of the reality of the ratings scale. I don't think this is unique to Uber or car services by any stretch either. I have noticed that any service with too many ratings choices seems to suffer from poor ratings quality. Yelp is my go to example here. There should be no shame in a restaurant rated 3 stars, but in actuality it's seen as the kiss of death to a lot of places. Here again, some people are rating as if 3 stars is the baseline, some people as if anything more than 1 is earned at great cost. When you're pulling your responses from everyone in the world, I don't think you can really get consensus on a scale that goes beyond up / down.