Evergy
Utilities
65
out of 100. Number 77 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where Evergy does well
- The Privacy Statement states plainly: 'We do not sell your personal information' — a clean line many peers blur.
- Utility-service vendors get contractual limits (access 'only to the extent necessary,' with required return or destruction of data when the engagement ends).
- The policy has an explicit COPPA children's-privacy section and lets customers correct or deactivate account information online or via Customer Service.
- Paperless billing can be cancelled 'at no cost' to restore mailed paper bills, and the Thermostat Program itself is voluntary with per-event opt-outs — and the main website Terms of Use sends disputes to Missouri courts rather than forced arbitration.
If you sign up for a free/discounted smart thermostat, you give up your right to sue Evergy in court or join a class action — disputes go to binding arbitration in Kansas City, and any claim older than one year is automatically dead, no matter what the law says.
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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If you sign up for a free/discounted smart thermostat, you give up your right to sue Evergy in court or join a class action — disputes go to binding arbitration in Kansas City, and any claim older than one year is automatically dead, no matter what the law says.
"If you and Evergy are unable to reach a resolution to the dispute, you and Evergy will settle the dispute exclusively under the rules of the American Arbitration Association (www.adr.org) at its Kansas City, Missouri office. Any election to arbitrate by one party will be final and binding on the other. YOU ACKNOWLEDGE AND AGREE THAT YOU AND EVERGY ARE EACH WAIVING THE RIGHT TO PARTICIPATE AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS ACTION OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING... Regardless of any statute or law to the contrary, any claim or cause of action arising out of or related to the Program or these Terms must be brought, if at all, within one year from the accrual of the claim or cause of action or be forever barred."
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Enrolling lets Evergy and its vendor Uplight remotely change your home's temperature and share information that can identify you and your address — including sensor data pulled directly off your thermostat — with third parties.
"By participating in the Program, you hereby grant to Evergy and Uplight the right to remotely access and control one or more smart thermostats at the address you are enrolling... Uplight may automatically change the temperature setpoint on your Device without any manual intervention by you." ... "you hereby authorize Uplight to access your Information maintained by Evergy and/or Device Manufacturer... Evergy and Uplight may share such Information each collects with third parties for the purpose of providing the Program and that any such Information shared with third parties may be personally identifiable to you or the residence where your device is installed."
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Evergy can change or kill the text-alert service at any time without telling you; texts about your account may travel unencrypted, and if your account info leaks through them, Evergy disclaims liability.
"Evergy may modify these Terms and Conditions at any time without notice and such modifications shall be deemed effective immediately upon posting of the modified terms. Evergy may also discontinue the Service at any time without notice." ... "the Service may not be encrypted and may include information about you, such as your account activity or the status of your account(s)... Evergy will not be liable for any disclosure of account information to third parties, nondelivery, delayed delivery or mishandling of, or inaccurate content in, the messages sent through the Service."
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Anything you send Evergy — comments, ideas, creative materials — becomes Evergy's exclusive property forever, usable for any commercial purpose, with no credit or payment to you.
"These submissions, whether posted to these Sites or provided to Evergy by email or otherwise, are non-confidential and shall become the sole property of Evergy. Evergy shall own exclusive rights, including all intellectual property rights, and shall be entitled to the unrestricted use and dissemination of the submissions for any purpose, commercial or otherwise, without acknowledgment or compensation to you."
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Your smart meter feeds detailed, individual energy-use profiles to Evergy, which it can tie to your identity, use to design new rate structures, and use to serve you ads.
"We may use advance metering technology to automatically collect your energy usage information for various purposes, including to: ... Monitor and analyze individual customer trends and usage ... Develop proposals for rate structures such as time of use rates" ... "We sometimes link this automatically-collected data to personal information in order to ... provide advertisements, content or features that match user profiles or interests"
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Go paperless and your bill counts as 'received' the moment it's posted online — even if the email alert never arrives — and missing it can trigger collection action or suspension of your electricity. (Plus, cancelling paperless wipes access to bill images older than three months.)
"By agreeing to suspension of mailed bills, I agree that posting of the bill on the website will constitute receipt by me of the bill for all purposes and that the bill is payable upon posting... I am aware that if I do not check the evergy.com website in a timely manner for my bill or fail to pay my bill by the due date for any reason, collection actions may be initiated against my account, which may include past due collection notices and suspension of electric service."
How these were found
Documents read directly from Evergy's official domains (no mirrors needed): www.evergy.com Terms and Conditions and Privacy Statement (neither page carries a version date); bcg.evergy.com Paperless Billing Terms and Conditions (undated) and 'Evergy Thermostat Program T&Cs - 2025 consolidated' PDF (the PDF filename and page text indicate a 2025 consolidated version; arbitration clause also mirrored on search snippets); prd.evergy.com Text Messaging Terms & Conditions via search snippet ('Terms Revised: September 5, 2019' — dated and old, clauses may have been superseded). Main website Terms of Use contains NO arbitration clause (disputes go to Missouri courts), so the arbitration score rests on the Thermostat Program terms. Regulated-utility context matters: rates, fees, and disconnections are set by Kansas/Missouri public service commissions, so price behavior is constrained by tariff law rather than contract alone. evergy.com.au is an unrelated Australian company and was excluded entirely.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.