Want to improve your rider rating? Try Uber’s new driver compliments feature

By Trevor Mogg November 22, 2016

Introducing Compliments | Vickie

Ever had a great Uber ride? One that really stood out from all the others? Perhaps the driver was super-friendly, or their choice of music hit all the right notes. Or maybe the car just smelled really nice.

Whatever the reason, it’s likely you gave the maximum five-star rating once the ride was over. And now, starting this week, a new “Compliments” feature in the Uber app lets you include a message so the driver knows exactly what it was that made you hop out of the car with a smile.

“We’re making it easier for riders to thank drivers for the things they do – big and small – to make the ride memorable,” Uber said in a message announcing the new feature.

So now when you give a five-star rating, you’ll first have the chance to choose from a bunch of stickers for one-tap Compliments, including “cool car,” “great conversation,” “neat and tidy,” and “above and beyond.” After that, you can make it more personal by tapping out a short message.

“When a rider leaves a compliment – say for expertly navigating winding city streets or striking up a conversation that brightened their mood – a notification will show up on the driver’s home screen letting them know what they did to make a rider’s day,” Uber explained.

Of course, you don’t have to expand on your five-star rating, but the ride-hailing company thinks the driver will rather like it if you do, and it’ll likely motivate them to continue providing excellent rides.

Uber said it wants to give its customers the chance to “thank and recognize drivers for the things they do to make the experience more memorable and fun” because sometimes “five stars doesn’t quite cut it.” While you could just tell your driver at the end of the ride what a great trip you had, having a compliment pop up on the smartphone a little later may serve as a welcome pick-me-up for drivers toward the end of a long day’s work.

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If you've been living a life where you thought Uber had “drivers,” it’s time to rethink your entire existence.
In 2017, Uber executive Nicholas Valentino, the operations manager for the company’s Atlanta operations at the time, repeatedly corrected the plaintiff’s attorney in a case when the latter referred to the people operating cars on Uber’s platform as “drivers,” the Washington Post reported Monday.
According to Valentino, they are not drivers. Instead, he wanted those individuals referred to as “independent, third-party transportation providers."
If that sounds like an off-the-cuff remark, think again. Apparently, Valentino repeated the claim a total of 16 times in the course of the case. The case, Jessicka Harris v. Uber, was filed by a woman who almost lost her leg when she was struck by a vehicle being operated on Uber’s behalf that she claimed had veered off the road.
In that same case, Uber was asked to “admit or deny that Uber is in the business of providing transportation,” to which the company’s attorneys also repeatedly “denied.”
Uber later settled the case out of court but has maintained throughout a number of similar cases that it does not employ its drivers, going as far as to say about one driver that it “never had an agency, employment, partnership, joint venture, or joint enterprise relationship with him.”
Gives you the warm fuzzies, right?
The transcript of the 2017 case comes as Uber is fighting a similar but different battle in its home state of California regarding whether or not its “third-party transportation providers” should be considered employees.
Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill AB5, which will give gig workers some of the same labor protections and benefits afforded to regular employees of companies, including health care subsidies, paid parental leave, overtime pay, and a guaranteed minimum hourly wage. It also gives employees the ability to unionize.
Uber strongly opposes the bill and said that the majority of the drivers on the platform would prefer to stay independent and have flexibility rather than be classified as employees.
“We expect we will continue to respond to claims of misclassification in arbitration and in court as necessary, just as we do now. But we will also continue to advocate for the independence and choice that drivers tell us again and again in surveys, polls, focus groups, and personal conversations that they value most,” Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer, said in a blog post after Newsom signed the bill.
“Today, drivers have control over when, where, and how they work," West said. "They can choose to work for any of our competitors at the same time, and many do. In the U.S., 92% of drivers drive less than 40 hours per week, and 45% of drivers drive less than 10 hours per week. This would all change dramatically if they were employees. We will continue to defend the innovation that makes that kind of choice, flexibility, and independence a reality for over 200,000 drivers in California.”
AB5 is expected to go into effect on January 1, 2020.