Ever looked at your Uber rider ranking and wondered how it wound up less than perfect? Well, buckle up. We're going on a journey into the mysteries of the Uber ratings system.
Hello, my name is Anna and I'm a people-pleasing perfectionist.
And this is why my Uber rider rating is really grinding my gears.
I know there are a lot of real problems to worry about in this world, yet I still feel a little indignant surge whenever I open Uber and see my current passenger rating of 4.95 stars.
A check of my ratings rundown shows one four-star rating has ruined my perfect score.
It means there is an Uber driver out there who was less than 100% pleased to have me in their car. And I have wracked my brain thinking about what I could have done to offend them.
Being a forty-something mother of two from the 'burbs, my days of falling drunk out of cars or throwing up in them are well behind me. I always tip. I always end every Uber trip with a grateful thank you, even those times where I wondered if my driver did, in fact, have a licence.
So, what was it? Did I talk too much? Did I talk too little? Did I accidentally slam a door?
I needed to find out what Uber drivers' pet peeves were before my rating tumbled further.
But first, how do the ratings work?
Just like passengers rate their Uber drivers following a trip, drivers also rate riders out of five stars.
A driver can't continue with their next job until they rate the previous passenger. If that rating is less than five stars, they need to add in details about why. Uber also offers drivers the option to not be paired with that passenger again.
Both sets of rankings are anonymous, so riders and drivers can't see the individual rating they have received from each other.
Your rider rating is an average of your last 500 Uber trips. Uber's website said very few people had a perfect rating — "so don't despair if your average isn't 5.0."
But as we've already ascertained, I am very much in despair.
So I asked Uber driver Shelley Winiana — also known as Hamilton's Uber Nan — what bugged her about her passengers.
The things that can knock a star or two off your rating
Not a lot bothers Winiana.
Out of the nearly 30,000 rides she's completed in the past five-and-a-half years, she said there were probably only about eight passengers that she had rated one star.
Winiana drives a lot of university students around Hamilton and has some firm rules when it comes to travelling in her car — no bad language and no open bottles of booze.
"The girls are the worst — they have those little cans of Cody's or something in their purses," she said.
"They'll sit behind me where I can't see and then they'll leave half a can in the bottle holders in the back of my car.
"[But] generally, people are very respectful."
Her main piece of advice for riders?
"Just behave yourself."
All that being said, Winiana said she wouldn't take a passenger's rating into consideration before accepting a ride request anyway.
"[Because] people get judged for things that I don't think are really fair," she said.
But people do get judged and rated accordingly.
Uber's tips for a five-star rating
Uber said things that might seem small to passengers can matter to drivers.
Its tips for being the perfect passenger include:
- Short wait times – drivers love it if a passenger is ready to go when the car turns up. It also helps if the passenger is actually at the location they've said they'll be.
- Courtesy – this means being a considerate passenger that doesn't eat or drink in the car (and definitely doesn't leave any rubbish like half-drunk Cody's cans behind).
- Being a safe passenger – make sure you're wearing a seatbelt and don't encourage your driver to break any of the road rules.
- Be polite and say hello – small talk might not be for everyone, but Uber said many of its drivers cite conversations with passengers as one of the best parts of their shift.
- Don't slam the door – apparently this was a common complaint from drivers, so be gentle with those car doors.
What happens if a passenger's rating gets too low?
If you're going around spilling drinks in cars and slamming too many doors, chances are your rider rating will dip.
Uber said if a rider's rating fell below the minimum average rating for their particular city, they could lose access to part or all of the Uber platform, as per Uber's community guidelines.
If somebody's rating is nearing that limit, Uber said it would let that person know and share some information with them that could help improve their rating.
Auckland's average rider rating last year was sitting at 4.86, so at least I know I'm still sitting above that with my 4.95.
But the reality is I will never know what it was that saw me docked a star on that one fateful journey.
My one ray of hope is that the rating is an average of my last 500 trips, so there's still a chance I could one day get back to that perfect five-star average.
I just have a few hundred trips to go.
How to check your own Uber ratings
Back in 2022, Uber made it possible for people to access a breakdown of their rider ratings — you can see exactly how many five-star ratings you have, how many one-star ratings you have, and everything in between.
Here's how to do it:
- Open the Uber app and click on 'Account'
- Click on 'Settings' and then click on 'Privacy'
- Where it says 'Would you like to see a summary of how you use Uber?' click 'See Summary'
- Scroll down to Ratings and then click 'View my ratings'
Voila! You can now see how many Uber drivers thought you were five stars or otherwise.
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