Are you an insufferable jerk who doesn’t have a car? Well soon, thanks to an update to Uber’s guidelines, you might be an insufferable jerk who doesn’t have a car or a ride!
Taking effect September 19, Uber is updating its Community Guidelines in Australia and New Zealand to add star rating requirements for riders. If a rider’s average rating falls below a set minimum, they will no longer be able to access the app, throwing them out of the ride-sharing party to walk home in shame.
It won’t happen all at once though, so you won’t be blindsided. First you’ll get several notifications telling you to get your crap together. But if you continue about your antisocial ways, you could end up stranded outside a bar after the trains have stopped.
Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald, Uber’s Susan Anderson stated that the minimum rating Australian passengers will be required to maintain is four out of five stars. That may seem fairly high, but most Australians have a rating of 4.5 or higher, and it would take a sustained string of bad ratings from several drivers to tank it to below four.
If you do get kicked off Uber, all hope is not lost – the BBC states the ban isn’t permanent, only lasting for six months. Anderson told Yahoo!7 that in order to be able to use the app again, riders will have to do “a short educational exercise”.
Australia and New Zealand will be among the first countries to implement this policy, with Brazil being the only other country where it is currently in use, according to the BBC.
So be polite, clean up after yourself, and try to get all your vomiting done before your driver shows up, lest your walk of shame become even more shameful.