3M
Industrials
42
out of 100. Number 276 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where 3M does well
- Renewals 2 of 20. Few problems found.
- The arbitration clause has a genuine opt-out: you can send a written notice to 3M Legal Affairs, 3M Center, St. Paul, MN, postmarked within 30 days of first accepting the terms, and opting out has 'no adverse effect' on your relationship with 3M.
- The privacy policy offers a full set of rights — access, copy/portability, correction, deletion (right to be forgotten), and the right to object to the 'sale' or 'sharing' of personal data under CCPA — with an explicit promise not to discriminate against anyone who exercises them, plus a right to appeal a denied request.
- 3M's cross-border data transfers are backed by standard contractual clauses or equivalent approved safeguards, and it lists the main processing countries (US, Costa Rica, Philippines, Poland).
- Its product Terms of Sale are at least transparent about the warranty: a defect warranty for a stated warranty period with replacement/repair/credit as the remedy, rather than hiding warranty terms behind a separate hard-to-find document.
3M alone gets to choose whether a dispute goes to binding arbitration — the user doesn't get that choice.
The fine print
6 clauses and findings from the draft archive, dated 1 October 2026. The plain English comes first; the small print is the company's own words. None of these has been checked yet.
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3M alone gets to choose whether a dispute goes to binding arbitration — the user doesn't get that choice. And arbitration here is effectively loser-pays: if you lose, you can owe 3M's reasonable legal fees too, which raises the stakes of complaining.
You agree that 3M may elect to resolve any dispute, controversy, or claim arising out of, relating to, or in connection with these Terms and/or the Site... through binding arbitration. ... The costs of the arbitration, including the parties' reasonable legal fees, shall in principle be borne by the unsuccessful party or parties.
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No class actions and no jury trial, period. You also agree that any claim must be brought exclusively in the courts of Ramsey County, Minnesota — 3M's home county — even if you live on the other side of the country.
ALL CLAIMS AND DISPUTES WITHIN THE SCOPE OF THESE TERMS MUST BE ARBITRATED OR LITIGATED ON AN INDIVIDUAL BASIS AND NOT ON A CLASS BASIS, AND CLAIMS OF MORE THAN ONE USER CANNOT BE ARBITRATED OR LITIGATED JOINTLY OR CONSOLIDATED WITH THOSE OF ANY OTHER USER. ... YOU HEREBY WAIVE YOUR CONSTITUTIONAL AND STATUTORY RIGHTS TO GO TO COURT AND HAVE A TRIAL IN FRONT OF A JURY.
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You have only one year from the first time something goes wrong to file any claim against 3M — even if the applicable law would normally give you more time. Miss that window and you waive the claim entirely.
You hereby waive any and all rights to bring any claim or action related to any matters under these Terms in any forum beyond one (1) year after the first occurrence of the kind of act, event, condition or omission upon which the claim or action is based.
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3M can change prices whenever it wants, and the new price applies to orders you already placed if they haven't shipped yet — including blanket and future-dated orders. Your quoted price isn't locked in until the product ships.
3M reserves the right to change prices at any time and will use reasonable efforts to provide at least 30 days' notice. Revised prices may apply to all orders shipped after the effective date of the price change. For clarity, blanket orders and orders specifying future dated shipments may also be billed at the pricing in effect on the date of shipment.
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3M automatically records your keystrokes and mouse clicks on its sites and uses session-replay technology (tools that can replay your browsing sessions) via third-party service providers. This is broad behavioral surveillance baked into the privacy policy.
We and our service providers and Business Partners may collect information about you by using cookies, web beacons, pixel tags, session replay and other similar automated data collection tracking technologies... such as your usage of 3M Websites and Apps... features used, links clicked, keystrokes and mouse clicks, 3M promotional emails opened, and dates and times of interactions.
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3M can rewrite its privacy policy unilaterally at any time. It only promises to ask for consent when the law explicitly requires it; otherwise, continued use of the site after the update is all it takes for new terms to apply to data collected going forward.
We reserve the right to modify this Statement at any time. Where required by applicable law, we will seek your consent to any material changes. Any modifications will apply only to the Personal Data we collect after publication of the revised Statement.
How these were found
3M is B2B-heavy with thin consumer-facing terms; no consumer subscription product, so auto-renew traps could not be found. Documents actually read (Oct 1, 2026): 'Terms of Conditions and Terms of Use - Legal Information' fetched from the 3M Australia page (identical global text governed by Minnesota law; the US/Singapore legal pages returned the same dispute/arbitration language in search snippets, but the Singapore page fetch failed with HTTP 500, so Australia served as the readable copy — no verbatim mirror was needed); '3M Global Privacy Policy' (Last Revised: November 16, 2025) fetched from the 3M Lebanon page (global text); '3M Terms and Conditions of Sale' PDF, Version 2.2 (January 2025). 3M's standard product warranty and liability terms are in the sale-terms PDF (B2B-facing); individual product pages carry their own limited warranties, which were not separately scored. Quotes are verbatim excerpts from these documents.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.