FirstEnergy
Utilities
38
out of 100. Number 319 of 512, counting from the worst.
Where FirstEnergy does well
- Arbitration 3 of 20. Few problems found.
- NO forced arbitration or class-action waiver: FirstEnergy's own Website Terms of Use send disputes to Ohio courts (Section
- rather than binding arbitration — notably better than most large consumer companies.
- Explicit no-sell statement: the Security and Privacy page says "We do not sell any personal information about customers to third parties" and requires prior consent before disclosing customer info (except as required by law, regulators, or for credit evaluations).
- The Privacy Notice offers access/correction/deletion requests and an opt-out of the sale of personal information and targeted advertising, with an online Privacy Form.
- AutoPay can be canceled at any time through the online account or by phone, and enrollment expressly does not affect customers' rights to file complaints with their state's utility commission.
- Text alerts have an easy opt-out (text STOP to 544487).
FirstEnergy can rewrite the rules of the site whenever it wants, without telling you, and just by keeping using the site you're deemed to have agreed.
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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FirstEnergy can rewrite the rules of the site whenever it wants, without telling you, and just by keeping using the site you're deemed to have agreed. The burden is on you to keep checking the page for changes.
The Company may, at any time and without notice, modify these Terms of Use by revising them on the Site. Your continued use of the Site constitutes your acceptance of any such revisions. You should therefore periodically visit this page to review the current Terms of Use.
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FirstEnergy lets ad companies track your online activity across other sites and apps for targeted ads — and openly admits this sharing can count as a legal "sale" of your personal data under state privacy laws.
You may see our ads on other websites because we use third-party ad services on our Services... These ad services track information about your online activities over time and across third-party websites and apps... These sharing activities may be considered a "sale" and processing of personal data for targeted advertising under applicable law.
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Your data — including payment info, energy usage, household income and health conditions listed as collected — can be handed to marketing partners and ad platforms, not just vendors doing work for the company.
We may share the categories of personal information we obtain about you... with certain categories of third parties, including... Our Partners: We may share your personal information with joint marketing partners and other business partners. Advertising Partners and Social Media Platforms: We may share your personal information with third-party advertising partners and social media platforms.
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Signing up for AutoPay does not pay your current bill — the first deduction skips a cycle, and if you don't notice the fine print you'll miss a payment and risk a late fee. Cancellation also needs three business days' lead time before a due date.
Once Customer enrolls, the Automatic Bank Draft Payment program will begin with the first bill rendered in their billing cycle. Therefore, Customer will still need to use another payment method to pay the current bill until Customer sees "Checkless Customer (Bill Amount) will be deducted from your account on (Date) - DO NOT PAY" on the payment stub.
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FirstEnergy can hand your agreement — and everything it covers — to anyone it likes, without telling you.
The Company may assign its rights and duties under these Terms of Use to any party at any time without notice to you.
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No concrete deletion timeline — your data is kept for the whole customer relationship and beyond, under an open-ended "legitimate business purposes" clause.
To the extent permitted by applicable law, we typically retain personal information we obtain about you for as long as it is needed (1) for the purposes for which we obtained it and in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Notice, which generally means that we will keep your personal information for the duration of our relationship; (2) to take into account applicable statute of limitation periods and comply with applicable laws; or (3) for legitimate business purposes to the extent permitted by applicable law.
How these were found
Documents read on Oct 1, 2026 via browser_open on the live firstenergycorp.com domain (no mirrors used). Privacy Notice: 'Last updated: January 14, 2025' (footer says Last Modified: January 15, 2025). Website Terms of Use: bears a 'Copyright © 2019' footer and search-index metadata suggests no update in years — it may be stale. Direct Debit (AutoPay) Terms: 'Last Modified: February 7, 2024'. Older guessed URL paths (/help/privacy_policy.html) returned 404 — the current canonical URLs used are as cited. I did not find a forced-arbitration clause in FirstEnergy's own consumer-facing terms; a third-party KUBRA EZ-PAY payment portal (demo.ez-pay.io) contains binding arbitration, but it is a vendor's demo site, not FirstEnergy's official terms, so it was excluded.
These notes come from the original draft and are not independent verification.