There is a problem with Uber deactivating driver accounts, and the company is taking steps to change that.
In a company blog post Monday, Uber announced some new initiatives to help drivers and suppliers who feel their accounts have been disabled — effectively the equivalent of being fired — for unfair reasons. Drivers claim they can lose their accounts due to false accusations of wrongdoing by riders who may be looking for an easy refund.
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To combat this, Uber is giving drivers more ways to appeal and review account deactivations, such as providing audio and video recordings to prove their side of the story. More vaguely, Uber is rolling out some kind of functionality that can supposedly identify users who regularly (and ideally falsely) report incidents with drivers in order to stop those ratings from being counted against drivers. The blog post doesn’t provide any technical details on how this actually works.
Still, it’s probably a good thing Uber is thinking about it at all. The gig economy is notoriously difficult to succeed in, and unfairly losing access to arguably the most popular and recognizable ride-sharing app would be a death blow to any driver’s career. And anyone who has ever worked in public service can tell you that the customer is not like that always exactly.
Anyway, don’t mess with other people’s money.
