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A. O. Smith

Industrials

49

out of 100. Number 217 of 512, counting from the worst.

  • Arbitration 16 of 20, bad
  • Renewals 0 of 20, good
  • Data sharing 10 of 20
  • Price & terms 12 of 15, bad
  • Data retention 5 of 15
  • Other findings 6 of 10

Where A. O. Smith does well

  • Renewals 0 of 20. Nothing found.
  • The privacy policy explicitly states it does not 'sell' personal information as defined under California and similar state laws, and it provides a 'Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information' page/form plus opt-outs for targeted advertising.
  • The arbitration clause is more consumer-protective than most: A. O. Smith pays the filing fee for claims under $10,000, and if the consumer prevails and the company made no settlement offer (or the award beats their offer by 25%), the company pays the consumer's reasonable attorneys' fees.
  • Children's privacy: services are for users 18+, no knowing collection from under-18s, and no knowing 'share' or 'sale' of minors under
  • SMS marketing is consent-based ('This service is optional and is not a condition for purchase') with a STOP opt-out.
  • The privacy policy lists concrete state privacy rights — know/access, delete, correct, appeal — with an email (InfoSecpolicy@aosmith.com) and web form to exercise them.

Any dispute you have with A.

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.

  1. Any dispute you have with A. O. Smith — about products, services, billing, even their text messages — must go to private arbitration, not court. There is no opt-out window anywhere in the agreement.

    ...the Company, including its affiliates, agents, employees, predecessors in interest, successors, and assigns, and you agree that any Dispute ... between you and the Company, regarding any aspect of your relationship with the Company, will be resolved in a binding, confidential, individual and fair arbitration process, and not in court. Each of you and the Company agrees to give up the right to sue in court.

    Terms and Conditions, Section 16 (Arbitration Agreement and Class Action Waiver)

  2. No class actions, no group claims, no consolidated cases — you can only ever fight A. O. Smith one person at a time, and the arbitrator can't grant relief that helps anyone but you.

    YOU AND THE COMPANY MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE OTHER ONLY IN YOUR OR ITS INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY, AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS, REPRESENTATIVE OR MULTI-CLAIMANT PROCEEDING, AND THE ARBITRATOR SHALL HAVE NO POWER TO AWARD CLASS-WIDE RELIEF

    Terms and Conditions, Section 16(9)(a)

  3. The arbitration is secret by default — you can't even publicly say an arbitration happened, let alone what the company was found liable for. This keeps bad outcomes invisible to other customers.

    You and the Company agree to maintain the confidential nature of the arbitration proceeding and shall not disclose the fact of the arbitration, any documents exchanged as part of any mediation, proceedings of the arbitration, the arbitrator's decision and the existence or amount of any award, except as may be necessary to prepare for or conduct the arbitration...

    Terms and Conditions, Section 16(14)

  4. A. O. Smith can rewrite the terms whenever it wants with zero notice to you — the changes take effect the moment they're posted, and just visiting the site afterward means you've accepted them.

    ...you agree, during the term of this Agreement, that the Company may: (1) revise the terms and conditions of this Agreement; and/or (2) change part of the services provided under this Agreement at any time. Any such revision or change will be binding and effective immediately after posting of the revised Agreement or change to the service(s) on the Company's Services. You agree to periodically review our Services... to be aware of any such revisions. By continuing to use the Company's services after any revision... you agree to abide by and be bound by any such revisions or changes.

    Terms and Conditions, Section 11 (Modifications to Agreement)

  5. The 'we don't sell your data' line comes with an asterisk: their targeted-advertising operation is admitted to be 'sharing' or 'selling' by another name. Their own chart shows identifiers, commercial info (including product registration and your water heater's configuration and performance data — temperature settings, water consumption, leak and fault history), browsing activity, and inferred profiles going to 'Ad partners and advertising technology companies.'

    We do not 'sell' Personal Information, as defined under California and other similar state privacy laws. However, we do engage in targeted advertising, which helps to serve you with A.O. Smith ads when you are not on our site... Please note that we process Personal Information in connection with certain types of advertisements, which could be considered 'sharing' under California law or 'selling' under other state privacy laws (e.g., California, Colorado, and Connecticut).

    Privacy Policy, Additional Information For Residents of California, Virginia, Colorado, Connecticut, and Other U.S. States with Similar Privacy Laws

  6. If anything goes wrong, the most A. O. Smith can ever owe you is what you paid them for the website/app services — regardless of the kind or size of the harm. Combined with the arbitration clause's ban on punitive or consequential damages, your recovery ceiling is very low.

    NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY CONTAINED HEREIN, TO THE FULLEST EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, COMPANY'S LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CAUSE WHATSOEVER AND REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF THE ACTION, WILL AT ALL TIMES BE LIMITED TO THE AMOUNT PAID, IF ANY, BY YOU TO COMPANY FOR THE COMPANY SERVICES DURING THE TERM OF YOUR USE OF THE COMPANY SERVICES.

    Terms and Conditions, Section 6.2 (Limitation on Liability)

How these were found

Terms and Conditions read in full directly from https://www.aosmith.com/terms.html (Effective Date: November 1, 2021 — not updated in ~5 years). Privacy Policy read in full from https://www.aosmith.com/Privacy-Policy/ (Last Modified: 6/19/2025). No subscription/auto-renew product terms exist on the site — A. O. Smith is B2B/contractor-heavy with thin consumer-facing terms, so autorenew is scored 0 with that limitation noted. Warranty documents were found only on third-party dealer mirrors (e.g., images.webfronts.com) and were NOT used as findings. No verbatim mirrors (OpenTermsArchive etc.) were needed — both documents fetched cleanly from the official domain.

These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.