For consumers
Dispute your background report
If something in your report is inaccurate, incomplete, or is not yours at all, you have the right to dispute it under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. It costs nothing, we are required to investigate, and anything we cannot verify has to come out rather than stay in.
Timing matters more than people expect. If you have a pre-adverse action notice, the employer is at a stage where a correction can still change the outcome, which is not true once a decision has been made.
Before you start
Have the notice or the report in front of you if you can, and have the reference number from it. Two minutes of looking things up now saves a round of correspondence later.
You do not need to send documents to file a dispute. File it first, tell us what is wrong and in your own words, and we will ask for anything we need. If you do have something that settles the point outright, a court record showing a dismissal or an expungement, send it to the address below once the dispute is filed and quote the name you filed under.
Or write to us directly
TrueFingerprints LLC dba Personnelgraph, 8 The GRN STE A, Dover, DE 19901.
What happens next
Received
The dispute is on the file with a 30-day clock running from the day it arrives, so the first step is simply that. Nothing is emailed to you automatically. If you want a copy of what we hold, ask at [email protected] and we will send one.
Reinvestigation
We go back to the source, which for a criminal record means the court rather than whoever supplied it to us. Federal law gives us 30 days, and up to 15 more if you send additional information during that period. That deadline runs against us, not in our favor.
Outcome in writing
You get the result in writing, and a copy of your file if anything changed. If we correct or delete something, we also have to tell the employer that received the report.
If the dispute is about a conviction, read this before you file. A conviction can be reported however old it is, so “it was a long time ago” is not on its own a ground for a dispute, and neither is a salary argument. What is a ground is that the record is not yours, that it is not a conviction when the report says it is, that the disposition is wrong, or that it has since been dismissed, expunged or sealed. Those we can act on.
Your rights in this process
- The reinvestigation is free. There is no charge for filing, for the investigation, or for the corrected report.
- We have to consider everything you send. You can add information at any point while the investigation is open, and doing so is what triggers the possible extension rather than costing you the dispute.
- Information that cannot be verified has to be deleted or corrected, not left on the file with a note that it was disputed.
- You can ask for the status of your dispute at any time, and you do not need a reason to ask.
- Filing a dispute does not stop an employer from acting, so if you have a notice in hand, tell the employer you are disputing as well as telling us. That is the step people miss.
The full statement of your rights, including what an employer owes you separately from what we owe you, is on the consumer rights page. The statutory detail is in the FCRA article. Nothing here is legal advice. See the terms of use.