Law Requirements
Warranty Footnotes:1. The term "lifetime" is not defined. In consequence, the duration of the warranty cannot be determined.2. The warranty includes numerous violations of U.S. warranty law, some of them serious.Read the American Standard faucet warranty.☆ Learn more about faucet warranties.☆ See how we determine warranty scores☆ Understanding the federal Magnuson Moss Warranty Act☆ Find out how to enforce your product warranty at The Warranty Game: Enforcing Your Product Warranty..Download/Read/Print our Model Limited Lifetime Warranty.
This Company In Brief
For most of a century and a half, American Standard Companies was an American manufacturer of high-quality sanitary ware, selling its products worldwide.
What remains of American Standard in the U.S. is not the familiar company of old. It is now a Japanese company. The faucets are not American faucets. They are produced in Mexico and China.
Its owner, LIXIL Corporation, is one of the largests sanitary wares companies in the world, competing with and for worldwide domination.
The faucets are still wellmade, however, and in many ways an improvement on the products of the old American Standard Companies.
A renewed emphasis on design is improving the look of the collection, but American Standard's cartridge technology has not kept pace with the enhancements introduced by other companies, a come-down for the company that invented the ceramic mixer cartridge for single-handle faucets over fifty years ago.
The limited lifetime warranty is poorly written but largely meets the requirement of a standard North American lifetime warranty, and is supported by a U.S.-based warranty service that is responsive if not always completely effective.
Founded as the Ahrens & Ott Manufacturing Company in 1875, the company merged with Standard Manufacturing of Pittsburgh and six other companies in 1899 and was renamed Standard Sanitary Manufacturing.
It became American Radiator and Standard Sanitary Company in 1929 after a merger with American Radiator Company. The name was shortened to American Standard Companies in 1967.
American Standard shares with Kohler the credit for successfully adapting the technique of bonding vitreous porcelain to cast iron and steel bathroom fixtures, a process that made modern sanitary bathware possible.
Scottish-born inventor David Dunbar Buick (later the founder of the Buick Motor Company) patented a method for "permanently bonding vitreous enamel to cast iron" in 1881.
American standard, then Standard Manufacturing, very soon thereafter began experimenting with the Buick method and quickly perfected the process of enameling iron and steel bath fixtures.
The company's enamel-on-iron tubs and sinks, and porcelain toilets became the hub of a plumbing empire that, by 1929, had become the world's largest producer of bathroom fixtures.
The Last Hurrah
Salem, Ohio, the site of American Standard's factory at 600 S. Ellsworth Ave. has a long history of manufacturing.
The first metal manufacturing operation on the site began in 1872.
It has been an American Standard plant since 1956 when it was acquired from Mullins Mfg. Corp..
Mullins had manufactured pressed steel Youngstown kitchen cabinets at the site since 1940. But, by the mid-1950s Amricans were nut buying steel kitchen cabinets, favoring the less industrial look of wood cabinetry.
For the past 60 years, the plant's 250 employees have produced American Standard's Americast® bathtubs — one tub per minute — in the 500,000 sq. ft. facility.
With the closing of the former Crane Plumbing plant in Nevada, Missouri in 2015, the Salem facility is the last plant in North America that still makes steel products for American Standard.
All the rest are gone, their manufacturing offshored to Asia and Mexico.
American Standard has opened not new production facilities in North America since the takeover by LIXIL.
In 2015 it announced plans to build a $22 million facility in LaVerne, Tennessee, but cancelled the plant in November of that same year due to the "economics of the project."
Americast® is a patented laminated material used to make bathtubs. The process bonds a high-quality porcelain surface to a formed steel bathtub reinforced with a composite backing.
The three-layer sandwich construction allows the company to use a lighter gauge steel to reduce weight to half as much as traditional cast iron. It has the same rigidity, better resists warping, has better heat retention, improved sound-dampening qualities, and is very nearly as durable.
Mechanical and hydraulic presses stamp tub shapes out of low-carbon sheet steel in a series of operations that form the tub step-by-step, shaping the steel slowly until a finished tub is the result.
The steel tubs are given a primer that's baked on at a high temperature. A finish coat is also baked on at more than 1,400° F. The top coat of vitreous enamel contains titanium, which gives the finished tub its bright white color.
Its 1912 publication, The Evolution of the Bath Room, comparing the modern sanitary bathroom to the wood and tin bathroom of 30 years prior, was able to truthfully claim that
"The bathroom of today is infinitely more cleanly, durable and efficient."
The company led the way to this "Bath Room" nirvana with innovations that included the one-piece toilet, built-in bathtubs, and faucets that mixed hot and cold water inside the faucet, today's standard two-handle faucet.
Later contributions included chrome faucet finishes in the 1920s and the ceramic faucet cartridge in 1972 – a faucet valve that has become not just the American standard, but the world standard for modern faucets.
The Breakup
In 2006, however, the company found itself in serious trouble.
An ill-conceived 1988 acquisition of the company by Kelso & Co., an investment banking firm, in a leveraged buyout left the company with long-term debt of $2.7 billion.
To survive, the company sold several subsidiaries unrelated to its core business. But, annual interest and amortization as high as $325 million left it unable to invest the capital needed to revitalize aging factories and modernize equipment.
After considering its options, the company's management determined that its three remaining divisions with globalized manufacturing (103 factories in 34 countries) were worth more as separate entities than the company as a whole and decided to sell the pieces, pay off debt, and divide any remainder among its shareholders.
Its heating and air-conditioning division became Trane, Inc., which was almost immediately snapped up by Ingersoll-Rand.
Its vehicle control systems division was spun off as WABCO Holdings, Inc. It remains a publicly-traded stock company chartered in Delaware but conducting most of its business in Europe from its headquarters in Belgium.
American Standard America
The aging kitchen and bath division, along with the right to use the American Standard brand name and logo, was sold to Bain Capital Partners, a private equity equity fund controlled by presidential aspirant and Senator Mitt Romney.
Bain immediately sold a majority interest in the division's North American assets to Sun Capital Partners, another private equity firm, in accordance with a pre-existing agreement between the two companies.
Sun Capital recreated the company as American Standard America (A-S America).
And just that quietly, on November 14, 2007, after 133 years of pioneering innovation, the old American Standard Companies, an icon of American plumbing, ceased to exist.
American Standard Brands
Sun Capital already owned two other sanitary ware companies, Eljer Industries, Inc., and Crane Plumbing, LLC, both acquired in 2005.
In 2008, these companies, along with AS-America, were recast as three separate divisions of a new holding company, American Standard Brands.
Ideal Standard International
These included both upscale European faucet brands , and Ideal Standard, a manufacturer of mid-priced faucets for the European market.
In 2009, Bain consolidated all three of these companies into a new holding company, Ideal Standard International, headquartered in Brussels.
LIXIL Corp.
American Standard's former Asian properties, including ten relatively modern Asian factories, were sold to INAX Corporation, a Japanese sanitary wares company.
INAX subsequently merged with several other Japanese building products companies to form LIXIL Corporation.
LIXIL bought American Standard Brands from Sun Capital in 2013.
With that purchase, LIXIL took control of all of the old American Standard Companies except its European operations.
Being a major player in two of the world's largeste markets, however, was not enough for LIXIL. It also wanted an entrée into the European Union.
At the time, Bain did not want to sell Ideal Standard, so LIXIL cast about for other opportunities. (Bain sold Ideal Standard to Villeroy & Bosch in 2024 for just under $700 million.)
It focused in Europe's largest faucet company, the owner of which, TPG Capital, another private equity firm, had been looking for a buyer.
LIXIL assumed control of Grohe in 2014, giving it access to the last of the world's major markets. It joined A-S America in LIXIL's Water Technologies Unit.
Many analysts believe that LIXIL's primary goal in acquiring American Standard and Grohe was to open major markets outside ofJapan for its products in competiton with Japan's industry front-runner, Toto, Ltd., which successfully made a similar move decasdes ago with its product lines.
Japan's population is not only aging, it is shrinking, resulting in very little homebuilding. Almost one in seven homes is vacant, a number expected to rise. Roughly 9 million "akiya" (ghost homes) have been abandoned.
The resources provided to LIXIL by the smaller enterprises that combined for form the company gave it the means to aggressively pursue rapid expansion into European and North American markets.
With American Standard and Grohe, LIXIL has acquired two well-established brand names, long familiar to the buying public, under which to market its sanitary wares in North America and Europe, avoiding the need to build up a new and unknown brand name – a process that can take decades.
For more information on the Lixils takeover of Grohe, read our review of and its sink faucets.
The End of North American Manufacturing
Bain Capital reportedly did very well with its purchase, dismemberment, and sale of American Standard Companies. It sold the assets for a price that more than recouped its original investment, and still retained a minority share of American Standard America.
Sun Capital also gained, selling its majority share of American Standard Brands to Imax for a handsome profit.
LIXIL, now the owner of American Standard Brands, Grohe, and Spain's Roca Grooup, came out of nowhere to become one of the three largest bathwares companies in the world within five years, challenging and market leader, for supremacy.
The only losers were American workers.
Instead of investing in the modernization of the company's ageing North American plants, Sun Partners simply closed them down and moved production offshore, laying off nearly all of the its factory employees.
In the 1980s, American Standard, Crane, and Eljer had a combined 70,000 American and Canadian employees, mostly at manufacturing plants across Canada and the U.S.
Today, American Standard Brands employs a mere handful of Canadians and fewer than 3,000 Americans, of which barely 300 are in manufacturing jobs.
American Standard shuttered its last remaining Canadian plant, a 40-year-old acrylics factory in Winnipeg, in 2015. In that same year, the Crane factory in Nevada, Missouri, was closed, eliminating the last small vestige of ceramics manufacturing by American Standard in the U.S.
We can find just three production facilities left in all of North America:
• A plant in Salem, Ohio that makes Americast® bathtubs (see sidebar: "The Last Hurrah"),
• A recently-acquired walk-in acrylic tub factory in Grand Prairie, Texas, and
• A small former Eljer factory in Somerset, Kentucky that makes industrial shower bases, laundry tubs, and mop sinks mostly from terrazzo. [1] that are sold under Eljer's Fiat brand.
American Standard also sells commercial faucets under the Fiat brand, but these are not made domestically; in fact, no American Standard faucet is produced in either Canada or the U.S.
American Standard faucets are all imported. [2]
Hecho en Mexico
Where are they made?
Well, American Standard is very cagey about the origin of its faucets. It claims on its website that …
“Due to the fact we change the manufacturing location from time to time, we are not able to give you country of origin by model or even product.”.
Luckily, even if American Standard does not know where its faucets are made, we do.
The company is still very much in the business of manufacturing faucets, just not in the U.S. or Canada.
Even before the company's acquisition by LIXIL, Sun Capital had moved faucet production for the North American market to a plant already owned by American Standard in Monterrey, Mexico.
After American Standards' acquisition by LIXIL, the Monterrey plant was closed, [3] and faucet production was transferred to a giant (4,400-employee) maquila in Aguascalientes owned by its subsidiary, AS Maquila México, S. de R.L. de C.V.
The Monterrey plant did not stay empty for long, however.
In 2015, American Standard's sister company, dismantled its entire Mississauga, Ontario factory and trucked all of its machinery to the abandoned American Standard facility in Monterrey, where it set up shop.
Prior to the move, the Mississauga plant had assembled most of the faucets sold by Grohe in North America.
The Aquacalientes maquila, already American Standard's largest plant in the Western Hemisphere, has recently gotten even larger.
In 2018, LIXIL opened a $20.5 million plant expansion that added 140,000 square feet of factory floor, permitting the company to increase its workforce by 400 workers and raise production from 2.3 to 3.4 million units per year.
The parts and components used by the plant in its assembly of toilets, sink, urinals, and faucets are manufactured elsewhere, most by contract suppliers.
American Standard buys sanitary fixtures, components, and accessories from a veritable international who's who of sanitary ware suppliers located in Belgium, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Taiwan, and Vietnam — in fact, just about anywhere except the U.S. and Canada.
Many are made in former American Standard Companies factories that LIXIL now owns, including four sanitary ware factories in China: A-S (Shanghai) Pottery Co., Ltd.; A-S (Guangzhou) Enamelware Company, Ltd.; A-S (Tianjin) Pottery Co., Ltd., and Hua Mei Sanitary Ware Co., Ltd.
American Standard also owns an "interest" in an enamelware factory in the Dominican Republic: Sanitarios Dominicanos S.A. (also known as Sadovsa Standard), and ceramics plants in Indonesia, South Korea (American Standard Korea Inc.), Thailand (American Standard B&K Public Company Ltd.), and South Africa.
Founded in 1904 by Raymond Elmer Crane and Oscar Jerome Bacus, had a long and distinguished history as an American sanitary wares manufacturer.
Eljer invented the first vitreous china water "cistern" (as toilet tanks were called in those days) in 1907. Plumbers were skeptical of the durability of the ceramic product, so acceptance was slow.
To prove just how sturdy its china really was, the company staged a demonstration that was widely reported. A china tank was laid on its back on a steel rail, a plank was placed on top of it, and 27 men stood on the plank.
That ended any reservations about the strength of china cisterns, which quickly replaced less sanitary lead-lined wood tanks common at the time.
Eljer also introduced one of the first low-flow toilets, the Ultra 1-G, ten years before low-flow was mandated by federal law in 1972.
In addition to vitreous chinaware, the company manufactured and sold cast iron tubs, sinks, and toilets for residential and commercial use made in its cast-iron factory in Salem, Ohio, a few doors down from the American Standard Americast factory in the same city.
After Eljer converted back from war production in the late 1940s, the company made major capital investments in its North American plants, including robotic enameling in its foundry in Salem, Ohio, and a pressure cast system for its pottery plant in Tupelo, Mississippi.
These improvements increased the company's profitability to the point that in 1996 it was purchased by Zurn Industries and later merged with Jacuzzi and U.S. Brass to form the Bath & Plumbing Division of U.S. Industries, Inc., a diversified conglomerate.
By 2002, however, U.S. Industries was in trouble, having lost hundreds of millions of dollars in the prior year primarily due to an economic downturn and a dramatic decrease in home-building and remodeling. It indicated in its annual report that year that it might not survive as a going concern.
To dig itself out, it began selling off its business units, including Eljer, which was bought by Sun Capital Partners in 2005.
In 2008, Eljer joined Crane Plumbing and A-S America as divisions of American Standard Brands.
Under LIXIL, separate Eljer manufacturing has ceased, and the brand has been deemphasized by LIXIL to the point that it has almost disappeared.
For a while, it looked as though Eljer would become American Standard's economy brand of faucet and sanitary ware, initially to be sold exclusively by Menards stores. But that plan evidently did not work out.
Menards still sells Eljer chinaware as of the date of this report, but no faucets are being offered on the Menards website. All of the faucets still shown on the Eljer website are listed as "discontinued."
It's very likely that Eljer is out of the faucet business. Whether it is out of business altogether remains to be seen.
Outside Faucet Manufacturers
LIXIL buys faucet components from a variety of outside manufacturers in China, Taiwan, India, and South Korea. [4] It also buys an increasing number of finished faucets from outside contractors. Its known faucet suppliers include
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Lota is one of China's largest faucet manufacturers for the export market. It sells just a few Lota-brand faucets in North America but manufactures for so many North American faucet companies that it has established a U.S.-based English-language service center to provide customer support and replacement parts.
Lota manufactures store--brand faucets for large retailers, including many of the
It also manufactures for the who's who of the North American faucet industry:
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Xiamen Runner Industrial Corp., Ltd.
Runner Industrial is a subsidiary of the Runner Group, which owns multiple subsidiaries that manufacture kitchen and bathroom fixtures and fittings, water and air purification devices, and health care systems. It manufactures faucets for
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Guangdong Meijie Faucet Co., Ltd.
Meijie is an manufacturer that, according to its website, is "dedicated exclusively to developing OEM, ODM and Private Label products for the North American marketplace."
Meijie manufactures a number of private brand faucets, including
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Solex High-Tech Industries Co., Ltd.
Solex is a Chinese "one-stop-shop" sanitary wares manufacturer that makes the majority of the
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NCIP, a Taiwanese company that manufactures faucets and faucet components in its Guangdong factory in South China, just north and west of Hong Kong. It makes a small number of American Standard lavatory faucets. It also manufactures faucets for
For example, American Standard's plant in Mexico has begun assembling a good many of the Grohe faucets sold in the U.S. alongside American Standard faucets.
Faucet Design
American Standard has never been particularly well known for faucets.
Its main line of products has always been ceramic, steel, and cast iron: toilets, sinks, and bathtubs. Faucets seem to have always been sort of a sideline, offered just to round out its sanitaryware lines.
In plumber polls, fewer than 6% of plumbers identify American Standard as their preferred faucet. In our top-of-mind consumer survey, American Standard is the first name that came to mind in only 2% of our U.S. respondents when thinking "faucets."
That may be changing, however. LIXIL seems to be putting more emphasis on its faucet products.
The company is improving its designs as indicated by its recently opened design studio in New York City, and additions to its design staff headed by Jean-Jacques L'Henaff, a graduate of L'Ecole Supérieure de Design Industriel in Paris, and generally considered one of the world's premier industrial designers.
Recent American Standard designs have won numerous awards in international design competitions, including a Red Dot for excellence in design innovation for its Edgewater semi-professional kitchen faucet collection.
The Good Design Award for "excllence in design," sponsored by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design, is the oldest and most prestigious of the international design awards. Established in 1950 in the U.S. by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr., along with some of the premier industrial designers of the period, including Charles and Ray Eames, Eero Saarinen, and George Nelson, it is the design award against which all other design awards are measured.
Faucet Finishes
Seven faucet finishes are available on American Standard faucets, but according to a company source, more are in the pipeline. By the time you read this, they may be on tap.
The finishes offered on any one faucet vary from just one to all seven. The average is between four and five finishes.
Almost every faucet is available in polished chrome and often in some version of nickel, brushed or polished.
Like chrome, nickel is usually electroplated, but unlike chrome, which is a hard metal that can withstand a lot of abuse, nickel is relatively soft and scratches easily.
American Standard's nickels, however, are not electropated. They are created using (PVD), a process that produces a much harder finish, even harder than plated chrome.
The company's bronze is called Legacy Bronze, an appripriate name since it looks like a finish from the 1970s. It is very dark, almost black with copper highlights, what was once called antique or vintage bronze. It is apparently being phased out.
Crane, founded in 1855 as the R.T. Crane Brass & Bell Foundry in Chicago, invented the pastel bathroom in the 1920s featuring fixtures designed by Henry Dreyfuss, the premier industrial designer of the time.
Four iconic Dreyfuss product designs are on permanent exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art.
The designs were very popular in the 1950s and came to epitomize the post-war bathroom.
In 1978, the company introduced the Dial-Ease washerless faucet valve to compete with Moen's washerless valve, introduced 30 years earlier.
It was years too late. By 1978, American Standard had already introduced its ceramic disc valve that was to revolutionize the faucet industry, eclipsing washerless valves by 1990.
In 1986 Crane Co. divested itself of its plumbing unit which was reorganized as Crane Plumbing, LLC.
A controlling interest in the divested company was acquired by Sun Capital Partners in 2005 and merged with American Standard America and Eljer Industries in 2008 to form American Standard Brands.
After the merger, American Standard discontinued the Crane brand. The closing was announced on its website as follows:
"Crane plumbing has merged with American Standard. In light of this, Crane Plumbing products are no longer being offered in the trade channel. We will continue to provide customer care support and product information support for these brands, which can be found on this site. Thank you for your interest and support for Crane Plumbing."
A sad end for an old and well-respected company. But its iconic sinks and faucets are valued items today, selling for thousands of dollars to collectors and architectural restorers.
American Standard continues to provide customer care and limited product information for legacy Crane faucets, however, proprietary parts like the Dial-ease valve cartridge are no longer made and difficult to find.
View the final Crane Plumbing Sink Catalog.
We don't know at this moment what will replace it or even if it will be replaced. Dark bronze is not as popular as it was a decade ago, having been largely supplanted by the growing popularity of black finishes.
The company's Matte Black finish is its only powder coating. It is essentially a durable paint, tough but not as resistant to mars and scratches as the metal coatings.
It has about the same durability as the finish on your car.
Electroplating
involves immersing the faucet and the metal to be used as plating in an acid bath, then applying an electrical charge to both objects so metallic ions are drawn from the plating metal to the faucet.
The process can be hazardous to the operator and the environment. It involves toxic and corrosive chemicals that must be disposed of safely. No other coating technology even comes close to the dangers involved in electroplating.
The top coat may be polished or brushed. Chrome, a relatively hard metal, is usually polished to a high shine. Nickel, a softer metal, is usually brushed to help hide the inevitable minor scratches.
Physical Vapor Deposition
, or PVD, is one of the latest space-age faucet finishing technologies and the gold standard of faucet finishing, rapidly replacing electroplating as the finish of choice.
Although the technology was discovered in the 19th century, it was not used in industry until the 1950s, and then only rarely due to its great expense. Its first use was inside nuclear reactors, where a very tough finish was necessary to withstand the hellish environment.
Today, PVD technology is everywhere, and the machinery required is getting smaller, faster, and cheaper all the time.
Load a chamber with unfinished faucet components, remove all the air, and add back a carefully calculated mix of nitrogen or argon and reactive gases.
Add a rod of the metal to be used for the coating. Heat that rod to a temperature so high that the metal dissolves into individual atoms. The atoms mix with the various reactive gases to get the color and finish effects you want and are then deposited in a very thin layer – 2 to 5 microns – on the components.
Different finish colors and effects are created by using various plating metals and varying the mix of reactive gases. Some of the results are astounding, almost magic.
Titanium, an inert, dull gray metal in its natural state, can be used to create a brass or gold finish, like Brushed Cool Sunrise, by combining it in a PVD chamber with nitrogen gas. Adding methane to the mix reddens the color, producing a rose gold finish. A touch of acetylene darkens the finish for an antique or vintage brass effect.
Despite being just microns thick, a PVD coating is extremely dense and, in consequence, very hard and durable. By some estimates, it is up to 20 times more scratch-resistant than electroplated chrome.
From long experience, we know that PVD is nearly impossible to accidentally scratch or mar, never fades or changes color, and resists all forms of soiling.
The finish can usually be maintained with just an occasional wipe from a damp cloth to remove water spots.
Powder Coating
is usually described as semi-durable
, not as robust as electroplated or PVD finishes, and requiring more care to maintain a like-new appearance.
It is essentially a dry paint in powder form applied using a special low-velocity spray gun that disperses the powder while giving it a positive electrical charge. The particles are drawn to the item to be finished, which has been given a negative charge.
Once the powder is applied, the item being coated is baked in an oven or microwaved, which melts and bonds the powder and changes the structure of the coating into long, cross-linked molecular chains.
These chains are what give the coating its durability, reducing the risk of scratches, chipping, abrasions, corrosion, fading, and other wear issues.
Faucet Valve Cartridges
American Standard invented the ceramic mixing cartridge in 1972.[5] Its proprietary mixing cartridges is very robust with very few reported problems.
It is no longer cutting-edge technology, however.
has bounded past American Standard's basic ceramic disc valve with its Diamond Seal Technology™ (DST) super cartridge introduced in 2007.
One disc in the two-disc set is coated with diamond dust, using a process that deposits microscopic diamond particles on the disc.
says the diamond coating keeps the discs absolutely smooth by continuously polishing the uncoated disc, so they always mesh perfectly. It also continuously grinds away any mineral deposits that may insinuate themselves between the discs, causing leaks.
The more you use it, the smoother it gets, says , which claims that the cartridge will last up to 5 million rotations (or about 700 years in the average kitchen faucet, 10 times the life expectancy of a standard ceramic cartridge).
American Standard moving away from it proprietary cartridges to the standard cartridges developed by the Italian technical ceramics company, Galatron Plast S.P.A. in the 1980s.
Galatron's designs are simple to manufacture and very reliable. Over time they have become the defacto industry standard, particularly for faucets made in Chnina where dozens of companies manufacture the cartridges.
We have not identified all of the companies that manufacture valve catridges for American Standard, but we have identified Sedal S.L.U., a company chartered in Spain but manufacturing its cartridges in China at two facilities: Sedal Technical Ceramics in Jiangmen and Sedal Kaiping. Its cartridges are considered solid, reliable performers that should give leak-free service for many years.
Faucet Warranty
The American Standard warranty is a standard North American lifetime warranty to the original owner against "defects in material and workmanship." It applies to all parts and finishes with some exceptions. Electronic parts are guaranteed for five years, and batteries, as one would expect, have no warranty.
If the warranty was written by a lawyer, he or she must have been paid by the word. We don't think it was written by an attorney. It contains mistakes even a novice fresh out of law school would not have made.
A consumer warranty is one of the most complex of all legal documents. It has to comply with a minefield full of laws and regulations that can trip up even a seasoned attorney.
It has to be precise and clearly defined while avoiding the established legal terminology developed over decades, if not centuries, exactly for the purpose of ensuring that contracts are precise and defined.
It must balance protecting the company with the need to assure the customer that his purchase is secure from unanticipated problems.
It is abssolutely not a project to be taken lightly or shuffled off to a junior vice president with an MBA. Yet American Standard has done precisely that or something like it. Its warranty is, in a word, amteurish.
The company's earlier warranty (June 1, 1996) was inadequate but was short and to the point. The current version (July 1, 2020) is much longer without getting any better. In fact, it is worse, with even more problems.
Obscure Legal Terminology
Important parts of the warranty are in "legalese," the language only lawyers fully understand. However, most legalese is prohibited in a consumer warranty.
The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act of 1975 ( 15 U.S.C. §2301 et seq), the U.S. federal law that regulates the form and content of consumer warranties, was enacted, according to its legislative history," to remedy
"the widespread misuse of express warranties and disclaimers"
by requiring warranties on consumer products to be "clear and easy to read and understand" in order to prevent companies from hiding the true coverage and scope of a warranty behind obscure legal terminology.
Where legalese is unavoidable, it must then be clearly explained in regular English.
Undefined "Lifetime"
American Standard's immediately prior lifetime warranty defined lifetime
as "as long as the original consumer purchaser owns their home," an inadequate definition but much better than the current warranty that provides no definition at all.
Consequently, we don't know which lifetime is meant.
The requirement of
Continuing Faucet Ownership:
An Important Omission
lifetimeis not the only unaccountable omission in the warranty.
There are a number of possibilities. It could mean the lifetime of the buyer, or perhaps the lifetime of the faucet, or even the lifetime of the company.
The failure to define the term is truly amateurish legal drafting, not to mention a violation of Magnuson-Moss.
A consumer warranty must specify "the time period or other measurement of warranty duration." Without a clear definition of lifetime, it cannot be known how long the warranty lasts or when the warranty ends. (16 CFR § 701.3(a)(4))
Contra Proferentem
Sole Discretion
A second problem with the warranty is the company's claim to have the right to decide on the remedy to be provided under warranty "in its sole discretion."
However, under federal warranty law, a written consumer warranty may not
"…indicate, directly or by implication, that the decision of the warrantor … is final or binding in any dispute concerning the warranty …" (16 CFR § 700.8)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has repeatedly warned that a claim of sole or exclusive discretion in a consumer warranty is a "deceptive act or practice" prohibited under Section 5 of the FTC Act, and exposes the company to sanctions.
Inappropriate Voiding
The word "void" should never be used in a warranty. But, if it is used, it must be carefully defined and its scoperigorously limited.
The American Standard warranty uses the word "void" with unabashed expansiveness.
For example, the warranty is void if a faucet is …
"used in a manner for which it was not designed."
If ou use your faucet as a convenient place to drape your dishcloth when not in use, the warranty is void. The faucet was, without doubt, not designed for use as a drying rack for dishcloths.
The word "void" in a warranty (or any legal contract) means exactly what you think it means. The warranty is over, ended, done, gone, cancelled, terminated, finished, nullified, concluded, and extinguished. You no longer have a warranty, and all of that just for using your faucet as a dishcloth hanger.
We think this is more than a little extreme.
A reasonable provision would exclude damages caused by a prohibited use from warranty coverage. But the American Standard warranty does not even require that the inappropriate use cause damage. It is the use itself that voids the warranty, whether or not any damage results.
For an in-depth explanation of state law warranties, see The Warranty Game: Enforcing Your Product Warranty.
So, if your practice is to hang your dishcloth on your faucet to let it dry but keep it handy, you will have to get out of that habit if you buy an American Standard faucet because it voids your faucet warranty.
If the faucet starts to leak the very next day, too bad. You are on you own. You no longer have a faucet warranty.
Here is another example.
How to Void Your American Standard Faucet Warranty
in a manner for which it was not designed, an act that cancels the warranty. The faucet was not designed to be a dishcloth hanger.
You replace your kitchen sink, which requires the removal of the faucet from your old sink and its reinstallation on the new sink.
The faucet has been …
"moved from its initial place of installation,"
another forbidden act that voids the warranty.
There are more, but these two should be enough to illustrate the absurdity of the company's voiding provisions.
We are not so addle-minded as to believe that American Standard would actually refuse a warranty claim because you draped a discloth over your kitchen faucet or reinstalled your faucet on a new sink, or it was accidently scratched (another reason for the company to void the warranty).
If it ever did, we would find a thunderous herd of complaints on Yelp, Reddit, and X (formerly known as Twitter). There are none.
But in analysing a warranty, we must look not at what the company actually does, but at what it is legally permitted to do. And, by the terms of its warranty, American Standard could legally refuse a warranty claim if you ever used your faucet as a dishcloth rack or accidently scratched the finish.
Illegal Disclaimer
This next item, however, is more serious. It arises from this assemblage of turgid legalese,in all caps so you can't miss it:
"TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, AMERICAN STANDARD EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES OTHER THAN THE ONE PROVIDED HEREIN, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, STATUTORY OR OTHERWISE, INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR PURPOSE. AMERICAN STANDARD EXCLUDES SPECIAL, INCIDENTAL AND CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES FOR ANY BREACH OF ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY APPLICABLE TO THE PRODUCT."
If you understood that on your first or even fifth reading, you are even with our legal guys, who had to parse it word for word before it made much sense. Clearly not the "simple and readily understood" language required in consumer warranties.
This paragraph is an attempt to deny buyers the protection of state law implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for purpose for any defect in an American Standard faucet.
The provision is not just poorly written; it is illegal.
Magnuson-Moss prohibits a company providing a written warranty from excluding (or "disclaiming") coverage by implied warranties of Merchantability and Fitness for Purpose.
A company's written warranty is intended to supplement state law warranties, not replace them. Any attempt to deny state-law warranty coverage is void (and that's the proper use of the word void) and simply ignored by the courts.(15 U.S.C. &Sect;2308(a))
Consequential & Incidental Damages
Consequential and incidental damages are those other than the defect in the faucet itself.
As an example, your American Standard faucet leaks and damages your cabinets. The defect causing the leak is a "direct damage" to the faucet.
The damage to the cabinets is a "consequential damage". It is a "consquence" of the leak but not the faucet defect itself.
An "incidental damage" is the cost of making your claim under warranty. If, for example, you need to hire an appraiser to calculate the amount of loss, the appraiser's fees are an "incidental damage."
Collectively, consequential and incidental damages are called "indirect" or "special" damages;
Deceptive Language
However, the second problem with the attempted exclusion is more serious.
The language could be construed as an attempt at deception, and one of the cardinal rules of Magnuson-Moss is that warranty language must not be deceptive.
This provision would almost certainly lead a reasonable person, unfamiliar with Magnuson-Moss (nearly everybody), to falsely believe that a defective faucet would not be covered by state-law warranties – and that is the very definition of deception under the law.
We don't think for a minute that the company is being deliberately deceptive. No doubt whoever wrote the warranty saw the language in some other warranty, thought it was a great idea, and copied it, blissfully unaware that it is not allowed. (Many faucet warranties include similar language. We are not sure where it first appeared, but it has been widely copied.)
Under Magnuson-Moss, however, deliberate deception is not required to incur liability for a "deceptive act or practice" and the punitive damages that could result.
It is sufficient for liability that the company has not taken reasonable care "to make the warranty not misleading." (15 U.S. Code &Sect; 2310(c)(2))
The very presence of the provision in the warranty, however, evidences a lack of reasonable care.
Warranty Scoring
These defects in the warranty reduced its score, but not below average. Most of the defects, contrary to what American Standard may have intended, actually benefit the consumer purchaser rather than the company in any potential lawsuit – a common result of unskilled warranty writing.
In scoring, we look at the warranty as written, but also as applied.
As applied, there is no evidence that American Standard tries to enforce the more absurd provisions of its warranty. Customers' warranty claims experience is, by most accounts, satisfactory.
However, the warranty should be rewritten by an attorney who understands both warranty law and legal drafting a little better than whoever wrote this verbose, voluminous, unwieldy, and, in parts, illegal warranty.
Customer Service
American Standard may not know where its faucets are made but it does know where to find the parts for each faucet it sells.
The company's U.S.-based customer and warranty service is good; its agents are responsive, but we found three problems.
- Too many inquiries have to be escalated up the chain of command for a response or resolution,
- Hold times routinely exceeded our five-minute maximum, and
- Too much emphasis is placed on having a purchase receipt to get help with a warranty claim. Granted that a few claimants without a receipt are not actually entitled to warranty service, but getting conned by the few is much less damaging to the comapny than aggravting the many who, already annoyed by a defective faucet, will undoubtedly recount their negative customer service experience at length to friends, family, and the folks in the car pool.
Issue escalation suggests inadequate agent training, and long hold times are indicative of too few agents.
We scored customer service on our standard test at 4.0 out of 5. Any score 4.0 and above is considered satisfactory, but the company can certainly do better.
The Better Business Bureau rates the company a B, on a scale of A+ to F, for complaints against the company that were not ressolved or to which the company did not respond.
Old Plumber's Trick
Put the paperwork for your faucet, sink, disposer, hot water dispenser, etc., including receipts, installation instructions, user manuals, and warranties, along with any leftover hardware and special tools, in a plastic bag and tape it to the inside of the sink cabinet under the sink.
Even if you forget where it is, your plumber will find it when he or she starts work.
Not responding to a complaint, in the BBB's world, is a serious matter.
For comparison, are all rated A+, the BBB's highest score, for responding to every complaint and resolving most to the buyer's satisfaction.
The company is not BBB accredited and, therefore, not pledged to the BBB's high standards of ethical business conduct.
The American Standard Website
The American Standard website is, as you might expect, massive.
We gave up counting the number of bathroom and kitchen items represented on the site, but it's a lot. Despite its size, however, it is fairly easy to navigate. Drop-down menus lead you rather quickly to the information you need.
The site search function is powerful. You can find nearly anything using search. Menu navigation is intuitve and easy to follow. We had no trouble moving around the site.
The information provided about each faucet is about as complete as we have seen. It includes links to available finishes that (usually, but not always ) display the faucet in the selected finish. For faucets with variable flow rates, the rates are clearly displayed.
Rather than having to download a .pdf document to read detailed specifications, they are right on the page. You can either click on the "Specs" link at the bottom of the page to jump to specifications, or page down until you get there.
Care instructions, a link to installation instructions and warranty information are provided, and available replacement parts are shown right on the page.
And, if all this somehow does not answer your questions, the customer service telephone number is also displayed.
Faucets that are CALGreen® certified, ADA compliant, or WaterSense® listed are identified. Those that comply with California requirements are identified as "CEC Listed," meaning that the faucet appears in the California Energy Commission's list of approved faucets. (CEC listed" means something to industry insiders, not much to the general public. A better choice would be sometin like "CEC listed – approved for use in California.")
Testing & Certification
CalGreen® Certified: Many American Standard faucets comply with the energy-saving requirements of the California Green Building Standards Code. For a faucet to display the CalGreen label, it must have been tested for compliance with CALGreen Chapter 4, Residential Mandatory Measures, Section 4.303 Indoor Water Use, and certified by an independent testing organization.
The California Energy Commission sued American Standard for illegally selling unapproved faucets in California from January 2015 to September 2020. The company paid a penalty of $41,119.00 to settle the suit in 2021.
Comparable Compnies
Faucets made in North America, comparable to American Standard's products, include the following:
In Conclusion
American Standard makes a good fuacet that should provide years of trouble-free service. But it does not make the faucets in North America and has not for over a decade.
Its valve cartridges have fallen behind the technology curve. Its proprietary cartridge is solid, but does not compare to the super cartridges used in faucets, and, in any event, appears to be on its way out in favor of non-proprietary universal configuration cartridges that also do not compare to the super cartridges.
Its styling is clean and attractive and getting better, but its finish chart is lean, with just five available choices. Word is that it is continuing ot add finishes, while moving away from electroplating to the more durable PVD technology. But it will take quite a while to catch up to its competition.
Faucet Street Price Comparison
In U.S. Dollars
We can find nothing about the faucets that stands out and no particular reason to prefer an American Standard faucet over all of the other good faucets available in roughly the same price range.
On the other hand, if an American Standard faucet strikes your fancy, we can think of no reason not to buy it.
The quality is good, supported by an adequate, if flawed, lifetime warranty, and post-sale support is responsive and capable.
So, while we would probably look specifically for an American Standard faucet, if we found one we liked, we would have no hesitation installing it in even a busy kitchen or main bath.
Keep in mind, however, that when you buy an American Standard faucet, you are not buying an American faucet. What you are getting is a good quality American-designed but foreign-made faucet. If "made in U.S.A." is important to you, American Standard would not be your choice.
Continuing Research
We are continuing to research the company. If you have experience with American Standard faucets, good, bad, or indifferent, we would like to hear about it. Email us at starcraftreviews@yahoo.com or post a comment below.
Please note that we generally do not answer questions posed in the comments section below unless the question and answer are of general interest. For specific questions, please contact us by email. We generally respond within one business day.
Footnotes:
- Terrazzo is a composite material, poured in place or precast. It consists of chips of marble, quartz, granite, glass, or other suitable material, poured with a cementitious binder (for chemical binding), polymeric (for physical binding), or a combination of both. It is used primarily for commercial floors and wall treatments.
- For comparison, established American faucet companies that still make many of their faucets in the U.S. or Canada.
- The American Standard Monterrey plant did not stay empty for long. In 2015, LIXIL's newest acquisition, Grohe, was looking for a new home for its North American production then located in Ontario, Canada. It settled on the abandoned Monterrey plant and trucked all of its equipment, machine by machine, from Canada to Mexico. Grohe now assembles faucets sold in North America in Monterrey. See our report on for more information.
- Ideal Standard supplied many of the faucets sold in the U.S. by American Standard, including the upscale
- As early as the 1880s, the old American Standard Companies was a pioneer in the use of ceramics to make bathroom fixtures , so it seems entirely natural that it would put its industrial ceramics expertise to work creating a valve that used ceramics to control water flow. After much experimentation and development, the company received patent number US 3810602 A for the first ever "ceramic disc faucet".
- It was widely copied in Europe but slow to get around in the U.S. where Moen and Delta both had proprietary non-ceramic cartridges in which a lot was invested.
- Today, all major U.S. manufacturers use ceramic cartridges based on the American Standard design.