Review culture: How Uber and the rating requirements of modern society have devalued five-star experiences

Another day, another email needily demanding, “How did we do?”

“Share your thoughts, leave a quick review!” suggested the period panties company, “how was Neptune’s Grotto?” enquired the restaurant booking site, “you’ve recently bought 100% recycled toilet paper, what do you think about it?”, the email read.

When did we morph into a society where every transaction, whether it’s wall mounting sticky strips or a white T-shirt, had to be rated and reviewed?

Whatever your thoughts on 100 per cent recycled toilet paper, it does not need to be forever enshrined on the internet. Some things can just exist without being documented, tagged and shared.

It’s not just the inconvenience of having to unsubscribe to another tranche of marketing nonsense (because they will keep asking until you do), it’s that it represents this hyper-charged world where the worth of an actual five-star experience has been completely devalued.

Because look out if you give something or someone less than five out of five. You’re going to get them fired, and you don’t need that on your conscience.

Uber is the easiest example of this. We’re expected to rate every ride we take, and the default is five stars. If a driver hits below a certain average rating – reports vary between a 4 and 4.6 – they’ll be deactivated from the platform, and that’s someone’s livelihood.

But rarely is an Uber ride a five-star experience. The vast majority of them are just fine. The car turned up, it was probably a Camry, it didn’t smell, the driver said hello, they took you from departure to destination without getting into an accident or going on a rant about an alien takeover (true story).

Job done. That’s a three-stars experience. It was fine, it was what you needed it to be, what you paid for. No more, no less. But no, you’re not allowed to reflect that using the long-established star rating system that has served us for a century.

So, the perfectly adequate, unmemorable Uber ride is to be rated the same as the one that would actually constitute a five-star experience.

Perhaps that’s a meticulously cleaned and maintained car with a driver dressed in a smart, professional outfit and with flawless hygiene, who is personable and engaging but never intrusive or imposing, is clearly an excellent driver, and goes out of their way to ensure your comfort and safety.

These two things are not the same, but we have been coerced into flattening out standards to accept that they are.

Sometimes, the app will tell you your driver has a 4.9 star rating, averaged out over 6000 trips and they are, at best, mediocre. These things do not compute – and they shouldn’t.

Out of both principle and laziness, I rarely rate Uber drivers, unless they have actually stood out. Last weekend, I had one that showed me little magic tricks while we were waiting at red lights on quiet streets. He got five stars (even though, if I was applying a real system, it’s really more a four-star ride).

When a ride has been really vexing – they’re talking too loudly on the phone the whole time, it’s particularly pungent, driving recklessly or refusing to follow neither the app nor my directions – then I might give them three stars, because in the Bizarro World of Uber and most e-commerce platforms, that pass mark is considered a fail.

At one of Australia’s major department stores, employees are expected to achieve a baseline of nine out of 10 on post-purchase feedback forms from random customers. If they dip below the benchmark one too many times, they get pulled up.

One worker, remaining anonymous so as to not be rated out the door by their boss, was asked to explain some eights out of 10, where the comments had been “They didn’t say happy Christmas” and “The store was understaffed”.

Now, understaffing is a real issue, but that is not the fault of the individual employee. That’s like having a go at an Uber driver because you’re still mad at co-founder Travis Kalanick’s unethical business practices.

But the bigger problem is that eight out of 10 was seen as a fiasco. That’s not a please explain, that should be a runner-up prize.

I’ve been writing movie and TV reviews for 15 years, so a star rating system has real meaning to me. Last year, I only gave two films five stars – One Battle After Another and Sentimental Value. Those movies were superb, prime examples of filmmaking and of their genres.

Most films are three stars – inoffensive and fine, generally entertaining, sometimes boring or baffling, didn’t set the world on fire but also didn’t make you hate it either.

If you google a restaurant and café and see that it has ONLY a 4.2, you’d probably give it a miss.

But if you convert that number to a percentage, that’s 84 per cent. Imagine if you scored that on a maths test, you’d be stoked.

If the Good Food Guide, which rates out of 20, gave a venue a 16.8 (the same as that google 4.2), that’s two hats, a 0.2 away from three! There were only four restaurants (now two, after half of them shut) in all of NSW that were awarded three hats in the most recent round.

You could argue that a suburban café with a 4.2 on Google shouldn’t be judged on the same curve as a fine diner with a $325 a head degustation menu, and you’d be right.

It’s the same way in that you’re not really comparing a big-budget studio movie with an experienced auteur versus a small indie from a first-time filmmaker. But we should also have some semblance of consensus on what a five-star experience is. Mediocrity is not perfection, and it doesn’t have to be.

There are two things going on here, almost in conflict but really, they talk to each other.

On one side, is the loss of the value of five stars, especially when every transaction with any business is constantly begging for validation or feedback – “Stay on the line and take a short survey”, and if you try to give a neutral face because you don’t really feel one thing or the other about it, you’ll be asked a follow-up when all you want is to exit.

(As an aside, how is it that no matter how much feedback you give some companies, they don’t actually seem to improve. It’s almost like they don’t really care. Ahem, looking at you, our national airline.)

We are starting to lose the language and semiotic construction of being able to make the distinction between things that are fine, good and excellent.

That all feeds into the other aspect, which is the demand that everything be excellent or at least to be rated excellent. Most things in life sit in the middle, rare are the things that are one star or five stars.

But the click economy of the internet demands everything has to be either the best thing ever or the worst thing ever. If you want the algorithm and shrinking attention spans to take notice, it can’t just be fine.

If we don’t arrest this and reverse course, we’re going to end up in that maddening Black Mirror episode where Bryce Dallas Howard is desperately trying to get her personal rating up so she can participate in the world. Or, you know, China with its social credit system.

Fine has to be fine.

That morning walk you took with your dog where you made eye contact and exchanged smiles and pleasantries with your neighbours? Perfectly fine. If on that same coastal walk, you saw Pedro Pascal coming down the path the same time as a pod of dolphins breached the water against a double rainbow in the background? Five stars!

All those three stars is what makes the five stars extraordinary. It’s what makes for those special moments in life that we roll out for years as anecdotes to our friends and new people we meet. It’s remarkable in that it is literally worth remarking on.

Even the world’s best toilet paper can’t be remarkable. A Japanese toilet on the other hand, well, that’s something else.