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Comment by esotericn | Hacker News Reader

I personally find the idea that a driver has a 'star rating' kind of absurd. It feels like the most pernickety thing.

If my taxi goes to where I want to go, doesn't take a silly detour for money, and doesn't physically assault me, I'm good.

Outside of that, who cares, really? Where and who are these princesses that really care if their cab driver is a 4.2 or 4.6?

I tend to rate basically everyone in service interactions 5 stars because the fact they even turn up to their minimum wage job is a colossal privilege for me to enjoy.

Like, would you rate your bus driver if you could? Your checkout operator? Why? What possible benefit do you derive from that to outweigh the embarassment (to _both_ parties)?

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I agree with your point "I tend to rate basically everyone in service interactions 5 stars because the fact they even turn up to their minimum wage job is a colossal privilege for me to enjoy."

But one thing I like about rating things is that it gives you a way to flag things that go badly. That's what sucked so much about taxis - you'd be ripped off, forced to pay cash, order a car only to wait (and then it not arrive), or wait out for 30 minutes to flag one down. Drivers would be rude, they'd talk on their phones, they'd drive dangerously. And you'd have to grin and bear it (I've experienced all of the above).

Sure.

The correct way to deal with this is to have a 'report issue' button.

A drive is either acceptable or it's not. The whole gradient thing of rating a driver that didn't smile much 4 out of 5 is just absurd.

It's hard for me to imagine what a "four star Uber ride" looks like. I can think of non-catastrophic issues; maybe the driver has their car details in wrong and is hard to find, or urges you to get out somewhere not that close to the destination because it's a more convenient way to pick up another ride. But a 4-star rating does nothing to solve that, it just adds a bit to the risk of being fired somewhere down the line.

Given that, it just feels like a crummy affectation around a "report issue" button. If a driver was actually doing something dangerous, when would I ever want to handle that with one star instead of some actual context like "crossed three lanes with no signal then ran a red light"?

You don't get to pick your driver, so the driver ratings really don't matter to any particular user for a given ride.

IMO the driver ratings make sense, and give the driver incentive to not take purposefully long routes, to not ignore your requests to adjust the A/C, to not talk on their phone, etc.

I have been in countless cab riders where it is clear the driver does not care at all what you think about the ride or the overall experience, and they know you can't really do anything about it (other than maybe not tip them).

I've had Uber drivers who had cars that were in such poor repair that the ride was physically uncomfortable. Like they had no shocks in the car. To me, it was a minor inconvenience because I was hung over. Someone with a more serious medical problem might have had an even worse time.

I've also had drivers who had absolutely no idea where they were going. To the point where they couldn't even follow the GPS reliably and I had to constantly tell them to get in a different lane or we were going to miss an exit and add significant time on to the trip. This was on the way to the airport, so it was kind of important to get there without a lot of detours. It turned out they didn't even live in my city and had not driven around here at all before.

I do think the 1-5 stars is stupid because people interpret that differently. If it's essentially 5 stars = ok, < 5 stars = "fire this driver", then they should just make it a thumbs up /thumbs down rating.

There are drivers who flat out can't drive. Sure, they got me to the destination without crashing, but I've had ones who were sawing away at the wheel like they where trying to start a fire and used the accelerator and brakes as if they were boolean controls.

That's not a 5. I find Uber and Lyft drivers to be providing a great service at a fair price and most of them earn a 5 rating and a tip.

Exactly. I feel the same way about waiters.

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