American Water Works
Utilities
28
out of 100. Number 412 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where American Water Works does well
- Arbitration 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- Renewals 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- No forced arbitration and no class-action waiver anywhere in the Terms of Use — disputes go to New Jersey state/federal courts, which is rare among large consumer companies.
- The policy explicitly states 'We do not sell PI or share your PI for cross-context behavioral advertising' under California law, and 'We do not sell PD or process PD for profiling' under Virginia law.
- No auto-renew or cancellation traps: Auto Pay and paperless billing are strictly opt-in through MyWater, there are no subscription products to be trapped in, and water rates are set by state utility commissions, not by the company.
- The Terms state 'nothing in these Terms will supersede any other agreement' for customers — the website fine print does not override the regulated tariff protections (billing, shutoff) that state commissions guarantee.
Even though the company denies 'selling' your data under California privacy law, it keeps the right to hand your personal information to outside companies so those companies can market directly to you.
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.
-
Even though the company denies 'selling' your data under California privacy law, it keeps the right to hand your personal information to outside companies so those companies can market directly to you.
We may from time to time elect to share certain "personal information" (as defined by California's "Shine the Light" law) about you with third parties for those third parties' direct marketing purposes.
-
Third-party trackers on the site can follow your device across sites and time to serve you targeted ads — and the Virginia notice admits 'we do process PD for targeted advertising.'
When you visit our online services, we and third parties may use tracking technologies to collect usage information based on your device for a variety of purposes, including serving you advertising, based on your having visited our services or your activities across time and third-party locations.
Privacy Policy (Consumer Privacy Notice, effective Jan 1, 2023) — verbatim mirror
-
Every email, chat, or call with them can be kept — contents plus metadata — with no stated time limit.
American Water may retain the content of and metadata regarding any correspondence between you and American Water or our representatives, regardless of the mode of communication by which such correspondence was made.
Privacy Policy (Consumer Privacy Notice, effective Jan 1, 2023) — verbatim mirror
-
They can rewrite the rules at any time; the new rules kick in the moment they post them, and they don't have to warn you first — just keep using the site and you've agreed.
All such updates and amendments are effective immediately upon notice thereof, which we may give by any means, including, but not limited to, by posting a revised version of these Terms or other notice on the Site... We expressly reserve the right to make any changes to these Terms, or to the Site and its content, at any time without prior notice to you.
-
No matter what goes wrong through the site — even if it's their fault — the most you can ever recover from them in a year is $100.
IN NO EVENT SHALL AMERICAN WATER ... BE LIABLE ... THEIR CUMULATIVE, AGGREGATE, AND MAXIMUM LIABILITY FOR ALL SUCH CLAIMS AND OTHER MATTERS IN ANY CALENDAR YEAR SHALL NOT EXCEED $100.
-
Anything you send them — feedback, photos, survey answers — they can use, change, and republish forever, anywhere, without paying you.
By submitting any information or material to the Site ... you thereby expressly grant ... American Water a royalty-free, fully-paid, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive right and license to use, make and have made, reproduce, modify, create derivative works from, adapt, publish, translate and distribute such material (in whole or in part) worldwide and to incorporate it in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed.
How these were found
Terms of Use read live on 2026-10-01 at https://www.amwater.com/corp/terms-of-use (page carries no update-date stamp; footer doc code NGEDOCS: 1209712.3). The current Privacy Policy page (https://www.amwater.com/corp/privacy-policy) rendered only a redirect stub ('You are leaving a California American Water regulated operations page...'), and the old policy URL /corp/privacypolicy now returns 404 — so the full policy text was read from a verbatim mirror: a 2/7/2023 printout of the January 1, 2023 Consumer Privacy Policy filed with the Missouri Public Service Commission, https://efis.psc.mo.gov/Document/Display/93763 (verbatim mirror, per methodology). Policy language may have changed since 2023. American Water is a regulated utility: customer service, billing, and shutoff terms are governed by state public-utility-commission tariffs, which were not reviewed; water rates cannot be changed unilaterally by the company. Score kept modest: no forced arbitration, no auto-renew traps, and no data 'sale' under state privacy laws were found.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.