Uber Drivers Are Quietly Rating & Blacklisting Passengers

Uber drivers are blacklisting subpar passengers? What the hell is a "subpar" passenger? As long as you pay, what's the problem?

Anyone who’s hired an Uber car knows that you can give your experience a star rating when it’s done, but the thing you probably aren’t aware of is that Uber drivers are keeping tabs on passengers, and that supbar customers can end up being blacklisted. And this isn’t some informal system where drivers get together and say things like “Don’t pick up the Chris guy; he’s too handsome.” It’s a system where drivers can actually decide to not answer calls from passengers with low scores.

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I imagine you have to act like a proper ++++y bitch to get blacklisted.

taxi drivers do the same.. they see the same person who pissed on the seat the week before they probably wont' stop for them.

I for one see this as being a good thing. Ever since Ebay took the stance of "As long as you pay, what's the problem?" and left sellers without any real teeth to combat bad buyers I refuse to use it anymore.

I personally ran into a lot of bad buyers who claimed "It got broken during shipping, I want a partial refund and get to keep it" or like what happened to a friend of mine who sold a working motherboard, just to have the buyer claim it didnt work, sent him back their own broken one and kept his working one.

Not seeing the problem. Don't be a shitty person, don't get blacklisted. Are people really upset with this?

I see no problems with this. I have a friend who is a Uber driver in SF and he's met plenty of douchebags that he's just rated 1 star or whatever and blacklisted. I think the most ridiculous one was he was waiting for a guy, waited 5 minutes, called the guy, no answer, waited another 5. Friend then canceled him and the douchebag ends up calling/texting my friend threats and crap like 15 minutes later

I'm cool with this -- if I was driving and had some really asshole/shady people... and there was a way to avoid them in the future? hell yeah I'd blacklist them.

I don't think you could pay me enough to routinely deal with drunks, low lives, druggies,

The pay isn't great - and if someone routinely tips like shit (zero), they can go find a "real" cab that's dirty and driven by some drunk russian.

ah the good ole free from consequences way of thinking... people just think they can do whatever they want without penalty, welcome to the real world folks.

Why quietly?

That should be part of the business model, that you get to rate drivers and drivers get to rate you.

Just like on Ebay, both the reputation of the seller and the buyer matter, not just one. Bad fares suck ass, and if they consistently get crap reviews for say asking for a driver and not being ready when he shows up half the time or just being a rude asshole, then they should get a low score so a busy driver can pass them up for someone better.

I really like this. Fact is that some people are simply assholes and just don't care that they are perceived that way. These are the people you want to avoid.

So the ones complaining obviously were on the blacklist? Don't we all know that kinda person? Just this weekend I was out and listened to a woman b*tch up a storm because her room wasnt ready on time, she had to wait 7 minutes and demanded and received $100 off.

Probably the same kind of person with taxi service, be a couple minutes late and refuse to tip and probably down rate the driver.

I worked as a shuttle driver for over a year when I was desperate for a job. I wish I had something like this! Thankfully were I worked (Microsoft campus) 99% of the passengers were really good and nice! Every now and then you would get someone that would just treat you like dirt, smell REALLY bad, or treat other passengers badly. If they went out of line, I could always drop an E-mail to there boss, but it never got that bad since they know they were on company property.

On the open road, in your own car, with money involved, I can just imagine all the shit that can happen. Think of the things you would report to other drivers. Non-tippers, verbal abuse, car damage, bad smells, changing destinations often (I have heard of this) and giving the driver a hard time. When your a Uber driver your using your own car, you depend on customer reviews. If you see someone is flagged by other drivers, that will save you a lot of money, and flagging a bad passenger will save other drivers. Ultimately, don't be a prick, and you have no worries.

Good. It is nice seeing people get what they deserve.

Now if only there was a way for other service rating sites to provide this option, YELP would be a good one. Having worked in the service industry while putting myself through school its amazing how many people complain about anything and everything, justified or not, just in an attempt to receive a discount of some kind. You better believe that any establishment that provides a service, especially if tips are involved, will remember a bad customer. Good customers are rewarded with better service down the road. It all comes around in the end. Good for Uber.

I don't have a problem with firing customers.

You guys aren't getting it. They're BLACKlisting.

dr/owned said:

I imagine you have to act like a proper ++++y bitch to get blacklisted.

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Not really.

“They can give us a low rating. It can go both ways. That way, we can police each other.”

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It's like eBay in regards, where if you would order something, and it shows up not like what was offered, you throw up a negative score, they'll turn right back around and call your score negative just for kicks of it saying you were a pain to work with, etc.. Except the problem is they have a rating shy of 10000, yet you as a small time customer who has ordered less than a dozen things really get dinked hard.

DPI said:

You guys aren't getting it. They're BLACKlisting.

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There is nothing wrong with blacklisting a consumer as long as you have a good reason ... if they change the rating in the future so that a person could see what they are rated and why it might be more helpful ... valid reasons for someone to be blacklisted might be rudeness, hygiene, tipping, backseat driver, poor ratings, timeliness, etc ... questionable reasons for blacklisting would be race, religion, socialization, appearance, etc ... since the worst that happens if you get blacklisted is you have to take a normal taxi I don't see this as a major problem

DPI said:

You guys aren't getting it. They're BLACKlisting.

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No, trust me, we get it.

IMO the only thing these cabbies are really doing is giving feedback on tippers. Even if you are a completely idiot I am sure if you tip well you will have 5 stars. And if you are a quiet perfectly easy customer and you tip poorly you will have 1 star and a bunch of lies on your review. I personally don't hold cab drivers in high regard, obviously not all are bad but there are enough bad ones to ruin my day half the time I interact with them. I have learned one thing they only care about the money.


Quite frankly tipping is stupid, why does one tip a cab driver, and more importantly why does one tip a cab driver in this day and age? GPS + traffic data calculate the price and the cost. Even if they don't regular cab drivers have time built into the algorithm. And that is ALL a freaking cab driver does is move you from point A to point B. Doing this job shouldn't be rocket science or take any art, they just need to do it. And there are only 2 outcomes you either did it with success or you failed and deserve no money at all. Before GPS failure was usually signified by a driver taking a long time to get you there or failing to do it at all. This has happened to me on more than one occasion and every time that moron cab driver wanted me to pay when I finally said its obvious you don't know where this is I am getting out, oh and they wanted a tip. Can anyone explain to me why I was forced by my party to give money to a person who failed to do anything but waste my time? Or why these cab drivers feel they have any right to request such? Nope no one could they only did it because they were scared the cab driver would pull a gun on us or something. I just think these are the type of people rating us. But now days all that shit is impossible, you have GPS you can't fail to find the destination.


I think cab services like uber have a great chance to right the many wrongs of the taxis drivers of the world and America. Lets see if they can do it. I would start with eliminating the tip and going to a pass fail model. Then they can allow the cab drivers to freely rate customers as it will really be based on bad things customers do. Second it will allow customers to directly see the real cost of taking a cab and force the cab drivers to start taking their issues up with the taxi company rather than shitting on the customer even when the driver is completely wrong.

Come on Steve. A subpar passenger is pretty self explanatory. Rowdy, an asshole, etc.

I not only agree with the uber drivers.....I wish other forms of transportation would do the same.

If you want to go through life acting like an asshole to everyone around you....you can walk while doing it.

Scythe said:

I wish other forms of transportation would do the same.

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It should take more than opinion to deny you public transportation. Buses and so forth will most certainly have you arrested if the need arises.

In defense of Uber, they are not public transportation and as such have every right to deny you or anyone else service for any reason.

That said Uber will do anything that suits their purposes without regard to anyone.

"What the hell is a "subpar" passenger?"

You know the answer to this. It's anything you want it to be.

"As long as you pay, what's the problem?"

Ha ha ha... Really now. Do you hold yourself to that standard?

DPI said:

You guys aren't getting it. They're BLACKlisting.

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Good. They can walk, call a Yellow Cap, call a friend, buy a car, rent a car, you name it. Its not like Uber is the only way to get from point A to point B and is an essential service that would cause people great harm without. If they blacklist people that don't deserve it, they are turning down MONEY. I don't know about you, but not many companies can survive by turning down money without a good reason. If they blacklist people for being black, or gay, or whatever, im sure the press will get wind of it and crucify them.

Its all part of a free market. A company like Uber has the right to refuse service, and you have a right to refuse Uber.

I've been kicked out of two cabs the past two weeks because they didn't go the way I told them to go. They were ignorantly taking the long way and despite me telling them which way to go they ignored me. I then yelled at them and they kicked me out, but I made sure to leave the door open after exiting and then opening the other two doors as well lol... One of the cabbies tried to attack me but backed off when I informed him I had a gun..

Oh wait there was a third. He decided to take a u-turn into the valet area of a hotel and get stuck behind a limo. I sat there for two minutes and then told him to back up. He got all hesitant. I told him it was simple and if he knew how to drive he could do it easily. He told me to leave lol.

Sadly, none of these drivers spoke English as a first language. I never have trouble with the native Americans...

I should mention another funny thing. I would imagine that one problem Uber has is that it's drivers may not cooperate. After all they are competing for business. So you could imagine a cab driver getting a very good tip and then leaving the customer a trash review. Hoping that each time that customer comes up others will pass leaving the customer to himself. And all of this has me very curious as to if there is any such thing as priority on Uber for the drivers or if some drivers are automatically excluded from seeing some passengers depending on if they just picked someone up, or how far away they are etc...

jnmunsey said:

I've been kicked out of two cabs the past two weeks because they didn't go the way I told them to go. They were ignorantly taking the long way and despite me telling them which way to go they ignored me. I then yelled at them and they kicked me out, but I made sure to leave the door open after exiting and then opening the other two doors as well lol... One of the cabbies tried to attack me but backed off when I informed him I had a gun..

Oh wait there was a third. He decided to take a u-turn into the valet area of a hotel and get stuck behind a limo. I sat there for two minutes and then told him to back up. He got all hesitant. I told him it was simple and if he knew how to drive he could do it easily. He told me to leave lol.

Sadly, none of these drivers spoke English as a first language. I never have trouble with the native Americans...

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You sound like the sort of person I'd put on my Uber Blacklist.