This is not happening, I thought, as I jabbed at my phone to magic up a hybrid to convey me noiselessly to a central London studio. But my Uber app had vanished and wouldn’t reinstall, and was then ‘locked’.
Meanwhile, no black cabs were plying their licensed trade on Upper Tooting Road, where I was soaking up the vibrant multicultural scenery when this tech glitch occurred, outside a store called Niqaab and opposite Daily Fresh Naan.
I never keep drivers waiting. I almost always tip. I even sometimes make small talk over the beat of Heart FM
I moved fast to resolve the problem, i.e. I channelled Andrew Neil whenever British Airways fails to remember that he’s its most important client. I sent a stiff tweet to @UberUK, informing it that my account was disabled.
I expected a grovelling reply, and possibly a credit, to recompense me for this temporary inconvenience, as Uber realised it had made a terrible mistake and yes… who I was.
You may be surprised – or maybe not – to hear that this is not what happened. Uber replied. It had escalated my case ‘to the experts’ who actually have the power to unlock accounts. It then took a full week for Uber to ‘resolve’ the matter – and not to my total satisfaction. After some waffle about improving road safety for riders and drivers, it told me it had come to a determination: ‘As a result and due to receiving repetitive feedback about the same behaviour, we have permanently deactivated your account.’
I assumed this was an AI-generated reply. What had I ever done wrong? Nothing!
I never keep drivers waiting. I almost always tip. I even sometimes make small talk over the beat of Heart FM. Admittedly I don’t shoot the breeze as I do with black cab drivers, who all listen to LBC – they are like a living breathing extension of the station – but I am always punctual and polite. ‘This is a joke, right?’ I replied to Uber. ‘I’ve got a perfect record.’
Ah. As you may know, Uber applies a two-way rating system. After every ride, customers rate drivers and drivers rate customers from one to five to generate an average score or rating. For some reason, anything below 4.5 is deemed untouchable by drivers. It suggests you’ve thrown up in the Prius or left your fast-food wrappers on the seat and verbally abused the driver. But I hadn’t. Ever. Honest! And my rating was a lowly 4.09.
I subjected my account to forensic examination to try to understand what had happened. My account was deleted soon after I’d called an Uber XL for my daughter and her wife and a large painting of them both. Well. I dimly remembered a case of a gay CEO and his terrible Uber rating, which I looked up – and yes, here it was: a smart-looking exec called Svend Littauer from Kennington had a rating of 3.4 which was worse even than mine. ‘A driver told me anything under a rating of four was a bit scary. I’ve not been abusive at all,’ Littauer said, ‘so the only thing I can put it down to is the fact that we are a gay couple. It is the only explanation.’ Was I being deleted because my beautiful, beloved only daughter was a lesbian?
Given loads of drivers had decided I was below the salt, not just the one who’d taken my daughter and her tidy wife Jess to Clapton for £42.64, I didn’t think so. I cast my mental net wider.
My downgrade and deletion came after I’d spent months, years even, putting my own little finger in the dyke when it came to the tidal wave of anti-Semitism that followed 7 October. And I was called Rachel. It’s a Hebrew name. It means ewe. According to the App Drivers and Couriers Union, drivers in London and other urban centres are 75 per cent Muslim and research tells us that British Muslims are twice as likely to hold anti-Semitic views. Maybe the ride-hailing monolith had, by dint of its drivers’ majority religion, become the transport wing of the Gaza independence movement, and my name was on some kind of secret blacklist? Maybe when I called an Uber, it saw my name and just went ‘ew’?
Was I being deleted from Uber because my beautiful, beloved only daughter was a lesbian?
After consideration, that didn’t seem plausible either. Unlike black cab drivers, Uber drivers don’t listen to LBC. They wouldn’t have endured one of the many, many hours I’ve spent late on a Friday night debating the legal definition of genocide with Hassan from Hounslow.
My colleague Toby (Lord) Young once claimed he possessed something called ‘reverse charisma’. He could enter a room, he boasted, and several strangers would ‘hate him on sight’.
In the absence of convincing evidence to the contrary, my conclusion is that my poor Uber rating is not the fruit of anti-Semitism or homophobia, but is, in fact, the giftie that Robbie Burns sought, ‘To see oursels as ithers see us!’
Yes, if you want to feel really bad about yourself, I recommend an Uber account. Just remember to keep the driver waiting, snog your same-sex partner, and never leave a tip for best results.
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