Here is the clock your letter is required to mention, spelled out.
And you are not alone in this, measured rather than said: 31,306 complaint narratives in the federal CFPB database mention a screening company alongside a record the complainant says isn't theirs (mixed file / identity mix-up).
The clocks are fixed: 60 days from the adverse action to request your free report copy, then 30 days for the screening company to conclude a dispute investigation — 45 days if you send additional information while it is running. Put the date on your denial letter in and get the actual dates.
Runs entirely in your browser — the date is never sent to us and never stored. General information based on FCRA consumer rights as explained in FTC and CFPB guidance, checked 2026-09-06. Your denial letter and the agencies' own pages govern your case.
“My background check has someone else's record on it.”
We hear this most. a thread title on r/AttorneysHelp, read September 3, 2026 — from someone in the same position.
You have 60 days from the date on your letter to ask the screening company for a free copy of the report. Once you dispute something in it they get 30 days to investigate — 45 days if you send more evidence part-way through — and they have to correct or delete whatever they cannot verify.
The figure, how it was counted, and which companies it names are all in the block below.
CFPB published complaint narratives, 2011 - August 14, 2026. The CFPB ceased discretionary publication of complaint narratives on August 14, 2026, so every narrative-derived count on this site is a closed series and will not change. Complaint intake continues, and the per-company outcome table runs on all complaints and is current.
Get your own dates →Every step above is free. The report copy and the dispute are both free under federal law, and anyone charging you for them is selling you a letter you can write yourself.
Free, and it stays free. Nothing on this page sits behind a payment, an account, or a form — and we never ask for your name, your Social Security number, or your case. The tools here run entirely in your browser; we never see your answers.
Same name, different person — screening databases match records by name and birthdate at national scale, and people with common names collect strangers' evictions. In our scan of the federal CFPB complaint database, "that record isn't mine" is the most common pattern in complaints mentioning the biggest screening data brokers.
The 3 companies most often behind this situation account for 30,494 of those 31,306 — 97%. Here is the full ranking across every company we publish.
How these are counted: a case-insensitive full-text scan of 28.4 million complaint rows in the federal CFPB Consumer Complaint Database (2026-09-06, files.consumerfinance.gov), counting rows that mention the company and the problem's keywords. These are complaint narratives that say it, not a census of everyone it happened to — the real number is higher, and a small figure here means few people wrote it down in those words, not that the problem is rare. Sterling is excluded pending harvest re-verification.
The court record names a different middle name, birthdate, address history, or state you've never lived in.
Request your free report copy from the screening company named in your denial (you have to be told who they are — ask in writing if the landlord didn't say). Then dispute in writing: identify the eviction entry, state plainly "this record belongs to a different person," attach the mismatch evidence, and ask for deletion. The company must investigate — typically within 30 days — and delete what it can't verify as yours.
To get your free report — send to the screening company named in your denial letter (use the contact route on its official site or in the letter itself):
I was denied [housing / employment / a bank account] on [date] based on a consumer report you supplied. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act I request my free copy of that report. My name: [full name]. Address: [address]. Date of birth: [DOB]. Please send it to the address above.
To dispute an error — send with copies (never originals) of your evidence:
I dispute the following item in my file: [describe the entry exactly as it appears]. It is inaccurate because [not mine / paid on date / dismissed by the court / wrong amount]. Enclosed: [list documents]. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, please investigate and correct or delete this item, and send me the result in writing.
Keep a copy of everything you send, and send by a method you can prove (certified mail or the company's own dispute portal).
If you would rather not assemble it by hand: the Screening Dispute Kit (USD 39) writes the letter to the screening company and the one to whoever turned you down, dates your clock and gives you the CFPB text, in your browser. Everything above stays free.
Our fullest walkthrough of the letter sequence — dispute to the screening company, a hold request to the party still deciding, and a correction at the source of the bad data — lives on Keep the Job While You Fix the Report. It is written for gig drivers and job applicants, so the examples are employment ones, but the evidence table and the deadline table apply to a housing denial unchanged. We have not built a housing version of it and are not going to pretend the job version is one.
| When | What happens | Whose move |
|---|---|---|
| Day 0 | Adverse action — you are denied, or offered worse terms, because of a consumer report. You must be told this happened and told which company supplied the report. | The landlord, employer or bank |
| Days 0–60 | Request your free copy of that report from the screening company. Federal law says within 60 days of the adverse action. It is the actual report, not the landlord's summary. | You |
| Day X | Read it line by line against your own records and dispute every inaccurate item in writing, with copies of your evidence attached. The dispute is free. | You |
| +30 days | The screening company is generally required to investigate and to correct or delete what it cannot verify. Typically 30 days from receiving your dispute. | The screening company |
| +45 days | The same, extended, where you supplied additional information during the investigation. | The screening company |
| After | If they verify something you know is wrong: add a statement of dispute to your file, complain free to the CFPB at consumerfinance.gov (companies must respond), and to your state attorney general. | You |
Every step above is free. Anyone charging you to exercise these rights is selling you a letter you can write yourself.
Where these dates come from, so you can check them yourself rather than take our word for it. 15 U.S.C. §1681j is the free-copy section: it gives you the report without charge if you ask within 60 days of the adverse-action notice, and one free file disclosure every 12 months besides. 15 U.S.C. §1681i is the dispute section: the screening company gets 30 days to reinvestigate, extended by up to 15 further days — 45 days in total — if you send relevant information while it is running. 15 U.S.C. §1681m is the notice section: the adverse-action notice you were sent is required to include an indication of that 60-day period. Plain-English versions of the same rules: FTC, free credit reports and FTC, disputing errors on your credit report.
Full plain-English walkthrough on our home page.
No. The report copy after a denial and the dispute investigation are both free under federal law. Anyone charging you to 'remove' a mixed file is selling you a letter you can write yourself.
The record follows you to the next application. Cleaning it once stops the same denial from repeating at every future landlord using the same database.
Disputes fix errors. They don't erase history that's true — accurate records survive investigation. If the record is real, what helps is settling and documenting it, second-chance programs, and time. We built this site for honest people hit by wrong records.
You know why a stranger's eviction landed on your file, which identifier mismatches break the match, and that the screening company has to delete an entry it cannot verify is yours.
If you take one thing from this page, take this: the letter is boring and it works, and the phone call is exhausting and it does not. A phone call leaves no record you can show. A short, dated, written dispute with copies attached puts a company on a clock it cannot quietly ignore, and it takes about twenty minutes at a kitchen table. You do not need to sound like a lawyer. You need to be specific about what is wrong and attach the proof.
— Andrew at Axion Labs. Write to me at hello@getaxionlabs.com if a page here is wrong or a step does not work. I read that inbox.Screening companies relevant to this situation: lexisnexis risk · saferent · transunion rental. Based on FCRA consumer rights as explained in FTC and CFPB guidance, checked August 2026. General information, not legal advice. Free official complaint route: consumerfinance.gov.
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