Most drivers, don't give two shits about the job. And it's hard to blame most of them if you understand the dispatcher-model they generally work under. It's very cut-throat and has high pressures.
While this isn't an excuse on Uber's part, I think it's where Uber can step in and improve things. Originally Uber's goal was too make Taxi's an app. They've succeeded with that. Now they need to improve quality, and not necessary the quality of the app, but the drivers. They have to force a cultural shift through an antiquated market, where education levels are highly variable. They should test a drivers knowledge about Uber and ensure they know what customer expect in terms of service. On the flip side, it should be very clear to the customer what they should expect in terms of service.
They also need to improve there mechanism for feedback. They need this because they must force out bad drivers. It's single handily ruining their reputation.
Uber is great, the drivers are variable.
All that said, I live in a city and almost completely replaced my taxi usage with an eBike, so I hardly use the app anymore, but when I was a regular user (10-20 rides a month). Classical dispatching companies were much more reliable then Uber.
Uber claims [1] they have a "series of rigorous screening tests, including a background check, an in-person screening, a city knowledge exam, and other ongoing quality controls".
If true, that would seem to address your point about screening driver quality. But a number of people are reporting drivers who don't really know their way around the city, which suggests (if those reports are true) that the city-knowledge exam is either not rigorous enough, or somehow not testing the right thing.
To replicate that, though, Uber would also have to replicate some of the state apparatus around it, which they may or may not be able to do (or even want to do, ideologically). The London exam is effective in part because it's backed by law: it's illegal to drive a taxi if you haven't passed a licensing exam, and it's also illegal for someone who is properly licensed to lend out their credentials to a friend who'll pick up some people on their behalf, while the licensed driver takes the day off. And as you make the exam more rigorous, those counter-pressures increase, so if Uber had an actually rigorous knowledge exam, they would also have huge levels of cheating if there were no attempt at serious enforcement.
Uber could try to institute both a rigorous knowledge exam, and a high level of enforcement of the rule that only people who actually passed it may drive cars under Uber's name. But they would need some credible way of doing that, like roving undercover inspectors.
You could have the app send you a picture of the person who should be picking you up. The user could then report if someone else comes to pick them up. The only problem I'd see is that it might make riders uncomfortable if it is someone different, they might not want to cause a scene or any sort of confrontation, and they want to get to their destination, but they also wouldn't want to ride with someone unlicensed.
So I'm not sure exactly how you'd get around that problem. Maybe you give people who report that they have a different driver say $20 credit, and the ride is free or something. Of course then you'll have people trying to cheat the system.
Thats the thing tho, drivers have always been variable. Even before Uber. A lot of taxi dispatching companies get a lot of flack, but most have always been able to provide good service. All uber did was automate the job that is done by call takers. They havent really done much to improve the real problem in the taxi industry, which is unreliable drivers that constantly drop calls or act rude.
Most drivers, don't give two shits about the job. And it's hard to blame most of them if you understand the dispatcher-model they generally work under. It's very cut-throat and has high pressures.
While this isn't an excuse on Uber's part, I think it's where Uber can step in and improve things. Originally Uber's goal was too make Taxi's an app. They've succeeded with that. Now they need to improve quality, and not necessary the quality of the app, but the drivers. They have to force a cultural shift through an antiquated market, where education levels are highly variable. They should test a drivers knowledge about Uber and ensure they know what customer expect in terms of service. On the flip side, it should be very clear to the customer what they should expect in terms of service.
They also need to improve there mechanism for feedback. They need this because they must force out bad drivers. It's single handily ruining their reputation.
Uber is great, the drivers are variable.
All that said, I live in a city and almost completely replaced my taxi usage with an eBike, so I hardly use the app anymore, but when I was a regular user (10-20 rides a month). Classical dispatching companies were much more reliable then Uber.