Uber South Africa will permanently ban riders for consistent bad behaviour

Earlier this week, Uber’s US operations issued a statement explaining that riders will be banned from the service should their rating drop too low. Now, Uber South Africa has announced its plans to “foster a community of mutual respect” on the platform.

Instead of banning riders based on their rating, Uber South Africa will ban users based on drivers’ reports on their behaviour.

“We have recently updated our community guidelines which extends the same behavioural standards to the riders that we have for driver-partners and we will be notifying a small number of riders that their behaviour needs to improve or their access to the app could be removed — which is already done with drivers,” explained Alon Litz, Uber South Africa’s GM, in an emailed statement to Memeburn.

If you’ve done something terrible, stupid or completely disgusting in an Uber, no worries. The company won’t immediately ban riders if they’re naughty once.

Instead, the company has outlined a three-stage approach. Firstly, riders receiving bad feedback “will receive a warning and will be given advice on how to improve.”

If after this they continue to cause trouble with drivers, they will have their account suspended for a week.

Finally, “if still there is no improvement [riders] eventually face the possibility of full deactivation,” Uber SA clarified.

Uber South Africa failed to dictate how many reports warrant a temporary or permanent ban or how it plans to prevent those who have been booted from the service from creating a new account.

Feature image: Memeburn