If a driver's average rating falls below 4.6 Uber typically removes them from the platform. A rating of less than 5 stars is treated similarly to if a customer reported a driver for poor service.

Ahh, OK I had no idea that was a thing. I thought it was just for customer decisions.

I guarantee their algorithms factor in average number of riders who don’t rate anyone lol. Maybe they weight them. Maybe they grade everyone on a bell curve. Maybe they use it in C-suite meetings to determine strategies. I can just about guarantee they don’t ignore it, though.

They’re a tech company;a decent rating algorithm should be one of the most likely things for them to excel in, or they’d just lose to any company that does because all the good drivers they’re dropping are immediately signing up to work for a competing service.

tl;dr It is in ride-services’ best to retain good drivers, no?

In NYC at least, Uber has become the de facto way of getting a private driver to take you places.

Until that meaningfully changes I don’t think they care about anything but earnings.

Interestingly, that attitude is what allowed them to come in and replace yellow cabs as the de facto driver for hire option.

> Do you seriously cancel rides ..

It's also possible that the algorithm behind the scenes allocates drivers to demand based on ( proximity AND driver rating ).

If so then lower ranked drivers would be 'starved' out by higher ranked drivers.

Yes, rating is used for prioritization when proximity is equalish

Drivers with below 4 star ratings used to get dropped from Uber and Lyft. Not sure how a non-rating affects their score, but I'd assume the worst.

A non rating doesn't directly affect their score. But if a driver doesn't get plenty of five star reviews, they'll get dropped from the app because there are always people who give bad reviews because they had a bad day.