Seen At 11: Are Businesses Rating Your Behavior?
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Customers frequently use the Internet to review a business and its customer service.
But now, as CBS2's Kristine Johnson reported, the tables are being turned. Restaurants, hotels, even your favorite car service could be rating you and your behavior and it could cost you down the road.
"I was blacklisted," said Emily Tarran.
Tarran claims Uber -- her go-to car service -- all but stopped responding to her requests for pickup.
Now, she's trying to find out why from the drivers of the car service.
"He basically told me I had a really low Uber rating, under three out of five," she said.
That's right -- a rating. Tarran was shocked to find out drivers are rating passengers the same way passengers rate drivers: on a five-star system.
"It's ensuring accountability on both sides," said Josh Mohrer, general manager of Uber New York.
Mohrer said the rating system is meant to curb disrespectful or unsafe behavior.
"It's important to us that both sides are behaving well and giving each other a positive experience," he added.
Etiquette expert Patricia Fitzpatrick said people routinely use the Internet to review businesses, but now the tables are turned.
"It should be reciprocal, we should be nice," she said. "Better be on your best behavior and be nice, have good manners because it's being noted."
"All this computer stuff is taking the place of what used to always occur in the maitre d's head, in the waiter's head," said Steve Dublanica.
Dublanica, a restaurant insider, said advanced computer systems now keep track of how often you cancel your dinner reservations or skimp on a tip, and it could cost you.
"If you call and say I want a New Year's Eve reservation or a Valentine's Day reservation we would be like, 'I'm sorry, you're not getting one,'" he said.
Mark Ellwood, with Conde Nast Traveler, said hotels and airlines track both the bad and the good behavior of their clients.
"It's not a bad thing," he said. "So they can basically reward their best people."
But Tarran said she feels judged. she said she admits she wasn't always the friendliest passenger -- picked up each day before dawn -- but she doesn't feel the punishment fits the crime.
"The goal of the rating system it to keep the platform as positive and so by having that, being cranky in the car and taking it out on the driver, maybe you'll think twice about doing that when you know that there's going to be a consequence," said Mohrer.
Uber said passengers receive positive ratings 90 percent of the time.