A Bad Uber Passenger

There’s a blogger by the name of Matt Hauger who writes about technology…mostly computers and cell phones. I know, I know…join the club. It’s why I stay away from technology on this blog. There are already a gazillion guys who write about it…and it changes too fast to keep up unless you’re a real techno-geek who lives and breathes the stuff. And that ain’t me.

In October of 2017 Matt made a post about his Uber experience. Somehow that blogpost made its way to me the other day. I don’t know how things like this work. We are overwhelmed with information from so many sources. It’s hard to remember where one tidbit of info came from.

Anyway, Matt’s blogpost was about how he is apparently a bad Uber passenger. The realization came to him when an Uber driver asked him why he had such a low passenger rating? Matt was shocked and doubly unaware that not only was his rating only 4.33, but that such a rating is considered bad by us drivers. Very bad. 

It’s true: My cut-off is 4.5. It indicates a "problem passenger."  If I were ever offered a trip to pickup a passenger with a 4.33 rating, I’d decline it. No sense in asking for trouble. We are not required to accept all trips, nor are we penalized for not accepting trips.

With his powers of rationalization in high-gear, Matt went on to opine that his low rating was probably due to a couple of things. First of all, he admits that he doesn’t tip Uber drivers in cash and felt as if they were taking it out on him for that. This is nonsense. Most people do not tip in cash. Who carries cash anymore? Not me.

If we get tips, they’re usually added to the fare on the app after the fact, after we complete the trip and rate the passenger. We have no way of knowing whether or not a passenger adds a tip on the app. Tips do not show up immediately; sometimes we get notified a day or two later. So we cannot (and do not) penalize someone for not tipping us in cash.

Secondly, Matt Hauger thought that drivers down-rated him because he himself didn’t often give five-star ratings. He thought a four-star was perfectly fine. (It isn’t.) Matt says, ”It’s at least possible that my past drivers noticed when I gave them less than five stars; they might have marked me down in revenge.”

Nope! We rate you before you rate us. We cannot even accept another trip until we rate the last passenger.  And with Uber, once we rate a passenger we cannot go back in and change it. (With Lyft we can.)

The way it actually works is this: When we get to the destination, an end-trip screen pops up. It asks us to swipe- right if we’ve completed the trip. Once we do that it brings up the “Rate Passenger” screen. If we simply swipe-right it automatically gives the passenger five-stars. You can rate somebody with less than five-stars but if you do, Uber asks you to provide a reason. It’s time-consuming.  Unless the passenger was a real shit-bag I just give them five stars. And if we do down-rate someone, they will not know right away. Uber delays delivering that bit of bad news.

Similarly, as drivers we can never tell who gives us what ratings. Anything less than five-stars deliberately won’t show up right away. Like tips, it can be the next day before a driver discovers that he’s been down-rated. Uber does this so we don’t retaliate against a rider.

Having said that, I’ve been given some less-than-five-star ratings. I can usually figure out who gave them to me because I work part-time, and I do few trips in any given day (usually only half-a-dozen or so). A driver in a busier city would never know who gave him the low rating.

So it’s not that Matt doesn’t tip, and it’s not that he doesn’t routinely give five-star ratings. What could it be…what could it be? Leave it to ol’ Matt to get to the crux of the problem. Early in his blogpost, he wonders of the drivers, ”Why didn’t they like me? Was I oblivious to my own obnoxiousness? Did I have a subpar personality?”

Bingo!

I don’t know what the particular reason is that Uber drivers rate Matt so poorly, but I’m sure he earned it. It’s something. It could be his breath…it could be his attitude, or general demeanor. As I mentioned, I give most people five-stars…but not everyone! Sometimes we are not even aware of how we’re coming off to others.

Hauger’s solution is to be the perfect Uber passenger: To tip every driver and to rate every driver five-stars. But that just subverts the system and renders it meaningless. Look, you’re paying for this service, right? If the ride was fine…if the car was clean, the driver showed up in a timely manner, was pleasant, didn’t get lost and got you to the destination safely, then give him five-stars. But if there were…umm..."issues," then rate accordingly. That’s how it works. Or how it’s supposed to work.

Nobody is perfect. Not me. And not Matt Hauger.

You can read his blogpost HERE.