#7 Consumer Ratings, Bank Loans, and Lessons From Kedarnath

Something in Those Stars?

A plastic Chhota Bheem bobbed on the dashboard, below a cracked windscreen. In several places, the Rexine seat covers were worn down to the fabric, and the suspension clanked at every bump in the road,  speaking to the travails of gig workers during COVID. A few minutes into the ride, the driver took a phone call. I have no Kannada, but it seemed that this was about a credit into his Paytm account, which he sorely needed. I felt guilty that I had just switched my payment mode from cash to debit card, but after a week without a car, I had run out of change. During the twenty minutes I was in the cab, the taxi driver fielded five calls, all to do with his cash flow, and by the time I was dropped at my destination, his tone suggested that the matter was resolved. I was pleased, but also irked that - somewhere along the way - he had abandoned his face mask, which now hung from one ear.  

When Uber threw up the ratings screen for the drive, I saw two questions:

1. What is the ‘correct’ rating to give the driver?

2. Does it even matter?

If the answer to the second question is ‘No’, then the first question is irrelevant. 

But before I go on,

If you would care to, please share with me the rating you would give to this driver.

I agonised over the first question. I know that one poor rating is hardly going to budge the needle on the driver’s overall score, but that leads to a lazy answer. Instead, I asked myself the more definitive question - If I knew that the driver’s rating were to be judged solely on the number of stars I indexed, how many would I give him? The answer was still ‘One’. 

Consumer rating systems were put in place to try and sustain the quality of a service, and if I believe that my experience is sub-par, then it is dishonest to pretend otherwise. Nevertheless, there was no joy in punching that number, and as I read some literature around consumer ratings, I learned that I was not alone. An academic paper on the subject found that “The act of sitting in a car with your service provider….humanizes them in a way that, say, placing an online order with an anonymous Amazon merchant does not, and as a result, riders tend to give higher ratings.”

‘Reputation Inflation’ is the title of the paper, by Filippas, Horton and Golden. Over the next couple of days, I noted the ratings of the Uber drivers I was assigned, and saw how pervasive the phenomenon was - all the ratings were between 4.8 and 4.95, the latter having been assigned a ‘platinum’ status. Apparently, the ratings you see are the average of the last 100 ratings given to the driver; with my rating of 1,  my driver’s rating would drop to 4.76. One article I read referred to a leaked Uber document, according to which drivers are fired if their rating drops below 4.6. 

It would take another 4 one-star ratings over the driver’s next 100 rides to bring his rating down to that threshold. The odds of this happening seem remote, based on conversations with friends.

Even if it did, presumably, this system is not run like a guillotine - one day you are in, and the next day you are out. The purpose of consumer feedback should be to remedy, rather than penalise; hence, a slide in a driver’s rating should have the driver and the company trying to figure out what happened, and sort it out. Speaking  on the phone and not wearing a mask can easily be corrected, and I think one needs to register one’s dissatisfaction. 

Automatically giving a rating of 5 to every ride does no one a favour. “Pressure to give another person a high rating continually pushes the average up and up until it becomes irrelevant.”

On the other hand, if you really liked the ride, hit that ‘Tip’ button.

Data Dump

In the one year leading up to December 2021, overall bank credit in India rose by 7.1%. Of this additional credit:

• Public sector drew 11%

• Corporate sector drew down 18%.

• Individuals drew 83%.

Corporates have no need of loans, as they are not investing, while household borrowing keeps climbing.

Source: RBI Financial Stability Report, Dec 2021

Kedarnath temple, 1882

A curtain drops

When I was 12, we took a family trip to Kedarnath. Though we had spent every summer in the mountains, this was the deepest we had been into the Himalaya, and I was struck by the beauty that unfolded as we climbed up the Mandakini Valley, through the forests of pine and deodar, till we cleared the tree-line. “I feel like we are walking into a flower”, my mother said, “each petal more beautiful than the last.”

In the late afternoon, we emerged onto a meadow, dotted with tiny yellow flowers. The infant Mandakini coursed past us. Ringed by massifs of rock and shimmering ice stood the Kedarnath temple, crafted from huge blocks of chiselled stone. At night, we sipped elaichi chai on the steps of our dharamshala, and looked up at the pinpoints of light in a deep velvet sky. For the first time in my life, I was in awe of nature, and had the faintest glimmering of what drove the spiritual quest.

Was this the same quest that drove my mother to wake at 4 a.m., and bathe in cold water? My father herded us out into the cold before dawn. The sky still dark, we queued outside the temple for an early darshan, our bare feet cold against the flagstones of the courtyard. Inside the temple, the floor was wet and grimy, and I squirmed with disgust. The aarti was discordant and clangorous, the bells rang out of time, and the temple attendants shoved us into the sanctum. The smoky air was rancid with the odour of stale ghee, the priests were hurried and grasping. I couldn’t wait to get out into the glory of Kedarnath.

That day, I drew a curtain between spirituality and religion; between man’s search for meaning, and the edifices that grow around it. Some possess incredible grace and vaulting beauty; others manipulate human nature and exploit the incredulous.

Since then, my deepest prayers are for ‘Vivek’, for discernment. Naming our son Kedar is my benediction that he be possessed of that faculty.

TILpiece

A couple of nights before Christmas, we invited friends and family to dinner. A couple of days later, a cousin’s wife tested Covid +ve, and we advised all our dinner guests to have themselves tested. 

The lab technician twirled his cotton swab inside my nostril with a great deal more intimacy and enthusiasm than I cared for. My eyes streamed, and I protested, if weakly. The technician defended himself:

“For travel purpose I can do superficial; but for diagnostic, I must swab thoroughly.”