A First Advantage background check usually lands after a conditional offer, which is exactly when a mistake in it does the most damage. First Advantage is a consumer reporting agency under the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), and that status gives you real leverage: the right to see the file the company keeps on you, the right to force it to reinvestigate anything in that file that is wrong, and the right to be paid when a careless report costs you work. Our Employment Background Checks page walks through how the screening process is supposed to run from the applicant's side.

What is First Advantage?

First Advantage Corporation is an employment and tenant screening company headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia. It sells criminal-record searches, employment and education verifications, drug and health screening, and driving-record checks to employers, and it runs screens in more than 200 countries and territories. On October 31, 2024 it closed a $2.2 billion acquisition of Sterling Check Corp., folding one of its largest competitors into a combined business with roughly $1.5 billion in revenue — which means a single company now prepares a very large share of the screening reports American employers rely on. On paperwork you may see it under related names, including First Advantage Background Services Corp. and First Advantage LNS Screening Solutions, Inc., and its resident-screening arm supplies tenant history reports to landlords.

How to contact First Advantage

You can request your own file and file a dispute directly:

• Company: First Advantage Corporation, Atlanta, Georgia
• Consumer mail: First Advantage Consumer Center, P.O. Box 105292, Atlanta, GA 30348-5292
• Phone: (800) 845-6004
• Dispute email: consumer.documents@fadv.com
• Free file copy: fadv.com/candidates/free-report/

First Advantage provides one complimentary copy of your file per year and says it furnishes the report within fifteen days of a verified request. Check the address printed on your own report before mailing anything, since screening companies route disputes through different units, and keep a dated copy of everything you send.

Common First Advantage errors we see

• A stranger's criminal record attached to your file because you share a common name or date of birth — the mixed-file problem, and the costliest error in employment screening
• Charges that were dismissed, expunged, sealed, or decided in your favor still showing as live convictions
• One case reported two or three times, so a single old charge reads on paper like a pattern
• A misdemeanor written up as a felony, or an arrest reported as though it ended in a conviction
• Employment dates, job titles, salary, or education that the verification came back wrong on
• Records reported past the FCRA's time limits, or filed under the wrong Social Security number or address

How a First Advantage error hurts you

Screening reports almost always arrive after the offer, at the point where you have already given notice at your current job. One wrong line can turn a signed offer into a rescinded one inside a day, and the damage rarely stops there — the same inaccurate file sits in the system and can resurface on the next application, and the one after that. Federal law is built to prevent precisely this sequence: you are entitled to receive the report and a written summary of your rights before the employer acts on it, so that a mistake can be challenged while the decision is still open.

First Advantage's track record with regulators

First Advantage's accuracy procedures have already been tested in federal court, and the result is a matter of public record.

In Williams v. First Advantage LNS Screening Solutions, Inc., 947 F.3d 735, decided by the Eleventh Circuit on January 9, 2020, the company twice attached the criminal record of a man named Ricky Williams to a job applicant named Richard Williams. Its own written procedures required three matching identifiers before reporting a record on a common name; its staff used two. Worse, once the first dispute was resolved nothing in the file flagged the error, so the same misattribution went out again roughly a year later and cost the applicant another job. The court of appeals affirmed $250,000 in compensatory damages and, after cutting a $3.3 million jury verdict as constitutionally excessive, let $1 million in punitive damages stand. Source: Eleventh Circuit opinion, No. 17-11447.

A coordinated California class action captioned First Advantage Credit Cases, JCCP No. 4961, reached final approval on December 8, 2021 over allegations that applicants never got the clear and conspicuous stand-alone disclosure the FCRA requires before a report is pulled. None of that decides your case, but it does mean a wrong entry in your file is a known failure mode rather than a freak event, and you should not accept it as final.

Your rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act

Because First Advantage sells reports about you, the FCRA binds it directly. When it assembles your file it must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy (§1681e(b)) — the precise duty the jury found was violated in the Williams case. It must reinvestigate what you dispute and delete or correct anything it cannot verify (§1681i). Public-record information reported for employment purposes must be complete and up to date (§1681k). And before an employer turns you down because of the report, you are owed a copy of it and a written summary of your rights — the pre-adverse-action notice required by §1681b(b)(3).

How to dispute a First Advantage background check

1. Get the report. Ask the employer for the copy and the summary of rights it is required to hand you, or request your file straight from the First Advantage Consumer Center.
2. Read every line and write down each item that is wrong — including anything that plainly belongs to someone else with a similar name.
3. Collect proof: certified court dispositions, expungement or sealing orders, a photo ID and Social Security card, and pay stubs or a transcript for verification errors.
4. Dispute in writing to First Advantage at the Consumer Center address, enclose copies rather than originals, and keep a dated record of what you sent and when.
5. Tell the employer in writing that the report is disputed and ask it to hold the decision. If it is not corrected, or the job is already gone, talk to an FCRA attorney.

This information is general and is not legal advice for your specific situation.

Did an inaccurate First Advantage background check cost you a job?

An employment screening report is a consumer report, and the accuracy rules that govern it are enforceable — through actual damages, statutory damages, punitive damages where the violation was willful, and attorney's fees paid by the other side. If a First Advantage report that was not accurate cost you an offer, a promotion, or an apartment, that loss is exactly what the statute exists to address. Telling us what happened costs you nothing.

How The Kim Law Firm helps

We are consumer-protection lawyers who handle FCRA cases nationwide, and First Advantage is a company we have written about before — see our post on a First Advantage report that included false criminal history. We represent people whose reports are inaccurate: someone else's record, a case that was expunged, a charge inflated into something it never was, a verification that simply came back wrong. We do not help anyone conceal a record that is accurate. Where the file is wrong we push for the correction and pursue the damages that follow, and you owe us nothing unless we recover.

How much of the screening industry one company now covers

Employment screening looks like a crowded market from the outside and is a concentrated one from the inside. A handful of companies prepare a very large share of the reports American employers rely on, and each of them has grown by buying the others. That concentration matters to an individual for a practical reason: the same error, sourced the same way, can follow you from one employer's screening vendor to the next, because both employers are buying from the same underlying operation.

• Sterling — the competitor acquired here in a $2.2 billion deal that closed on October 31, 2024.
• HireRight — another national screener that has grown by absorbing smaller companies and their technology.
• Checkr — a large platform screener that acquired GoodHire.
• InfoMart — a Georgia screener that became part of Sterling before Sterling itself was acquired.
• Universal Background Screening — an Arizona company folded into this business in 2021.

If a report cost you one job, do not assume the next employer will see something different. Request your file from the screening company directly, correct it once and in writing, and keep the corrected copy. Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act a consumer reporting agency must not reinsert disputed information it deleted unless it certifies the information is accurate and notifies you — a rule that exists precisely because errors in a consolidated industry tend to reappear.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get a copy of my First Advantage report?

Ask the employer for the copy it is required to give you before it acts on the report, or request your file directly from the First Advantage Consumer Center by phone at (800) 845-6004 or through fadv.com. The company provides one complimentary file disclosure each year and states that it sends the report within fifteen days of a verified request.

How long does a First Advantage dispute take?

The FCRA generally allows a consumer reporting agency thirty days to reinvestigate, extended to forty-five if you send additional documents partway through. Ask the employer in writing to hold its decision while the reinvestigation runs, because a correction that arrives after the offer is withdrawn does not get the job back.

Can I sue First Advantage over a background check error?

In the right circumstances, yes. If First Advantage reported inaccurate information without reasonable procedures, refused to correct it after you disputed, or skipped the pre-adverse-action notice, and that cost you something, you may have a claim. A federal appeals court has already affirmed a seven-figure judgment against the company on facts like these.

What if the report already cost me the job?

That is the clearest kind of FCRA harm. Save the offer letter, the report itself, the pre-adverse-action and adverse-action notices, and every email with the employer and with First Advantage, then contact us. Lost wages, lost benefits and the reputational hit are all things the statute is written to compensate.

Is the case review really free?

Yes. We review First Advantage matters for people anywhere in the country at no charge, and if we take the case you owe nothing unless we recover for you.