will never not be mad about gig economy apps making a 4 star rating mean “unacceptable quality”
Doordash will suspend you below 4.2 stars.
Uber drivers can be suspended at 4.6 stars.
Lyft drivers risk suspension under 4.8 stars.
Even for apps where they don’t have a publicly stated minimum, their algorithms will bury you.
4 stars does not mean 4 stars. It means 1.4 stars.
If you give a person a 4 star rating, to these companies, you are not saying “I was mostly satisfied with the service, but there’s always room for improvement”—which is what 4 stars should mean—you are voting for them to be fired.
Genuinely, do not ever give people 4 star ratings on gig service apps for any reason that is not a safety issue where their continuation on the app could seriously hurt people.
If someone gives you “just OK” service where you don’t want to give them 5 stars, but you don’t actively hate their existence and hope they die, just don’t rate them.
I'd like to add (and I hope OP doesn't mind me piggybacking on their post) this applies to a lot of other things too.
I'm a teacher, and every year, the State sends out a "climate" survey to all students, parents, and teachers. It has a 1-5 scale and a 'not applicable' option. If you select 4 or 'not applicable' it's marked against the school.
For example, I'm a virtual teacher. The climate survey has questions about the safety and cleanliness of the halls and bathrooms in the school. A normal person would assume that, if they attend a virtual school, they should use the 'not applicable' option, since their school has no halls or bathrooms. Nope, if they select anything but 5 out of 5, our school gets marked down.
Its not just delivery apps that are rigged like this. Keep this in mind. Assume any survey is rigged like this.
I was warned before completing a survey at my car dealership after my car got serviced (so, you know, a standard thing that everyone with a vehicle should be doing at least once a year) that if I marked the service of the girl behind the counter as anything -below- 80%, she would get a formal write-up.
This girl was uncomfortably cheerful, to the point where anyone who has worked in service and retail could see she was just really, really close to losing her shit, but apparently if she didn't act like that, as a young, attractive woman, men would mark her down to the point she would get in trouble.
And this fear of being marked down didn't make her a better customer service rep. It made her terrified of doing anything wrong.
I once got my car serviced at the dealer, and then pulled out of their complex only to find that my breaks weren’t working. Like, I literally had to pull on the parking break to avoid running a light and sailing into oncoming traffic. After I somehow made it around the block and back into the garage, the service manager (who I should stress was not a mechanic, he was a suit behind a desk) approached me with a look of pure desperation and proceeded to offer me a million different perks if I would still give them 10/10 on the service review. And I was like “Um, I mean, it’s not your fault personally, but my breaks literally failed? That’s kind of serious?” and this grown man starts pleading with me because he has a family to support and anything less than a perfect score on the service review will put his job at risk. I think in the end I said I just wouldn’t fill it out, because I couldn’t in good conscience give a 10/10 for a service job than nearly saw me crashing into an urban intersection, but I also didn’t want to be the reason this guy lost his job. But like… what a horrible system where those are your only choices.
