DTE Energy
Utilities
31
out of 100. Number 384 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where DTE Energy does well
- Arbitration 0 of 20. Nothing found.
- Renewals 2 of 20. Few problems found.
- No forced arbitration and no class-action waiver anywhere in the Terms & Conditions (verified by text search) — notably better than most tech companies. The Online Privacy Policy (Apr
- pledges: 'Your PII will not knowingly be shared with any other organization for commercial purposes.' The Customer Data Privacy Policy was initiated at the request of the Michigan Public Service Commission: new customers receive it at service initiation, existing customers get it yearly with their bill, and data-access requests get a response within 10 business days. Text-messaging services are opt-in and can be stopped by texting STOP. BudgetWise Billing (level-payment plan) is voluntary opt-in, not a default, and DTE has waived late payment fees for it.
DTE can rewrite its website terms whenever it wants, with no notice promised.
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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DTE can rewrite its website terms whenever it wants, with no notice promised. Simply visiting the site counts as you 'knowing' and agreeing to the new version — you are deemed bound the date you use the site, whether or not you ever saw the changes.
DTE Energy and its Affiliates reserve the right to revise these Terms and Conditions at any time. ... Users of a website or a linked website are deemed to be apprised of, and bound by, any version of the Terms and Conditions of a website or a linked website referenced on the website or linked website on the date of use.
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Entering your info (account number, SSN, payment details) on dteenergy.com doubles as consent for DTE to move that data across international borders for 'standard business practices' — a broad cross-border transfer clause buried in website terms of use.
All users acknowledge and agree that by providing DTE Energy or an Affiliate with any personal or proprietary information through any and all DTE Energy or Affiliate websites, the user consents to the transmission of any personal or proprietary information including, but not limited to, over international borders as necessary for processing in accordance with DTE Energy or its Affiliates' standard business practices.
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Anything you post in DTE's forums or chat rooms is treated as public, and DTE can use anything in it — including your ideas or know-how — for any purpose whatsoever.
Posts by a user on any message board or in any chat room will be deemed public information and will not be protected as confidential. As such, DTE Energy and/or its Affiliate may use/provide information contained in any such post, including any ideas, concepts, know-how or other intellectual property, for any purpose whatsoever and as deemed appropriate by DTE Energy or its Affiliate.
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DTE promises not to sell your data, but carves out an exception: it can sell aged (delinquent) accounts receivable — i.e., your debt records — to collection firms, without your consent.
DTE Energy will not sell your information — except in connection with sales of certain aged receivables — to collection firms for purposes of removing this liability from its accounts.
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DTE buys commercially available data about you from third-party brokers and pulls information from social media sites, then merges it with your utility account data — a data-broker-style enrichment practice from a regulated monopoly utility.
We may also supplement the information we collect from you with information from other sources such as (a) publicly-available information that we have purchased from third party sources, (b) information available on social media sites, and (c) data derived from our own enterprise data analytics.
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If DTE's website or online services (bill pay, account portal) cause you harm, your only contractual remedy is to tell them about it — and their only obligation is to try to fix it. No compensation, no other recourse under the terms.
Unless specifically provided by law or otherwise stated specifically in a website, a user's sole remedy for problems with a website and/or website-related services is to notify DTE Energy or the applicable Affiliate of any problems with the website. DTE Energy's or an Affiliate's sole obligation will be to attempt to correct any problems with the website.
How these were found
Documents read directly via browser_open on Oct 1, 2026 (no mirrors needed for the three core docs). Versions: Terms & Conditions last modified July 30, 2026; Online Privacy Policy last modified April 8, 2021 (hosted on newlook.dteenergy.com, DTE's official mirror domain); Customer Data Privacy Policy last modified August 22, 2023. Search snippets from aem-qa1.newlook.dteenergy.com (DTE staging/QA mirrors of MPSC tariff PDFs) were used only for background on the regulatory tariff and not as sources for scored clauses. As a Michigan-regulated utility, DTE's data practices are also constrained by the Michigan Public Service Commission's Customer Data Privacy tariff (Case U-18485), which generally favors consumers; the score reflects website/account terms rather than tariff regulation.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.