A company you have never heard of wrote something about you, and the letter that turned you down did not say what it was.
Here is the number that decides how you spend tonight: 10,333 complaints about 6 specialty screening companies reached the federal regulator in twelve months and not one closed with relief for the person who complained.
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.
“Man How Am I Supposed to Live? Denied apartment due to my background.”
We hear this most. a thread title on r/Felons, read September 3, 2026 — from someone in the same position.
Whichever one it is, the same three dates apply. 60 days from the letter to ask for a free copy of the report. 30 days for the screening company to investigate a dispute — 45 days if you send more evidence while it runs.
The thing that moves this is the clock, and the clock starts below.
Every page below is free to read, and there is nothing to sign up for. Each one gives you what to do tonight, when your case is strong, the evidence that carries it, a letter you can copy, and its own measured count from the federal CFPB Consumer Complaint Database — so you can see how many other people wrote down the same thing.
CFPB Consumer Complaint Database, company_response aggregation on the CFPB's own case-sensitive company= filter, 12 months to 2026-09-08, checked 2026-09-09.
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.
| 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.
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 which of the eight situations is yours, you know the three dates that apply whichever one it is, and you know that the page answering it asks you for nothing.
These eight pages exist because they are the eight things people write down at midnight after a denial. If your situation is not on the list, tell me what it is and I will write the page. I would rather add a ninth than have you leave with nothing.
— 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.That one has its own walkthrough, because the income stops the same day: Keep the job while you fix the report — the three letters, the evidence by error type, and which deadlines are actually binding.
Thank you. That goes straight to the person who writes these pages.
That didn't send — try once more.