If a gig platform deactivated your account, a staffing agency paused your placement, or an employer withdrew an offer after a Vetty background check, the report behind that decision is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Vetty is a venture-backed screening startup built for on-demand and remote hiring, and the speed that makes it attractive to employers is exactly what puts you at risk when an automated match is wrong. The law gives you the same rights here as against any screening company: see the report, dispute it free, and be paid for what an error cost you.
What Vetty is
Vetty, Inc. was founded in New York in 2016 under the name Smart Screen and is now headquartered in Cedar Park, Texas, according to its own site and independent company databases. It sells identity checks with a selfie match, Social Security number tracing, national, county, and federal criminal searches, sex-offender and global watchlist screening, driving records with monitoring, education and license verification, drug testing, and I-9 processing, and it markets to on-demand platforms, staffing firms, healthcare, education, retail, and volunteer programs; the dog-walking app Wag is a client it names. The company describes its screening as FCRA-compliant and states that it is PBSA accredited. When it assembles those records and sells them to a platform or employer, it is acting as a consumer reporting agency with every duty the FCRA imposes.
Where these reports go wrong
Automated screening fails in automated ways. A national criminal database match on name and date of birth can attach a stranger’s conviction to your file — the same failure that produces a mixed credit file — and a “possible match” that a human should have cleared reaches the platform as a hit. A charge that was dismissed can show as pending; an expunged record can be pulled from a database that never caught up with the court; a non-conviction older than seven years can appear even though the FCRA bars it. On a gig platform there is often no human to call, so a deactivation lands before you have even seen the report.
Gig work and the pre-adverse action copy
When an employer is about to take adverse action based in whole or in part on a background report, the FCRA requires it first to give you a copy of the report and a written description of your rights (15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(3)(A)). The Federal Trade Commission’s guidance to employers describes the same two documents, and adds that the earlier notice that a report will be ordered must be in writing and in a stand-alone format. Whether those employment rules reach an app-based worker classified as an independent contractor is unsettled. Staff of the Federal Trade Commission wrote in a 1998 opinion letter that a trucking company screening drivers it engaged as contractors had to follow them. Federal district courts have since held the opposite in at least two cases, Johnson v. Sherwin-Williams Co. (N.D. Ohio 2015) and Lamson v. EMS Energy Marketing Service, Inc. (E.D. Wis. 2012), and the Johnson court gave the staff letter no weight.
What does not turn on how a platform classified you is Vetty’s own conduct. Its duty to follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy (§ 1681e(b)) and its duty to reinvestigate what you dispute (§ 1681i) apply to the consumer reports it sells, whoever ordered them.
How to get your report and dispute it
Vetty runs disputes through its applicant portal. According to the company’s help center, you log in at applicant.vetty.co, open the check, choose “Dispute,” explain the error, and attach documents; you can also email disputes@vetty.co or call 1-855-468-3889 (weekdays, 9:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern), and the company says it resolves disputes within 30 days, the FCRA’s outer limit. Your completed report stays available in the same portal, and an employer that ordered it must give you a copy before acting on it. The company does not publish a mailing address for disputes, so send the dispute through the portal and keep a dated copy of what you submitted and every reply; that record is what later shows the company had notice and kept reporting anyway. Our guide to disputing a background check covers what to say and what to attach.
What you can demand from Vetty’s file
Asking for your own file gets you more than the report a platform saw. On request, a consumer reporting agency must disclose all information in your file at the time of the request, the sources of that information, and the identity of each person that procured a report on you for employment purposes during the two years before your request (15 U.S.C. § 1681g(a)(1)–(3)). For a record matched to you by name and date of birth, the source is the useful part: it tells you which court or database supplied the entry, and so where the correcting disposition has to come from. The list of recipients matters after a dispute. When an item is deleted as inaccurate or no longer verifiable, the agency must, at your request, notify any person you designate who received a report containing it for employment purposes within the previous two years (§ 1681i(d)). That is how a correction reaches an employer that turned you down before you found the error.
When it becomes a legal claim
Consumer reporting agencies must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, reinvestigate disputes, and delete what they cannot verify. A stranger’s record on your report, a dismissed charge reported as a conviction, or a dispute that changes nothing is the exact failure the FCRA makes compensable: actual damages for the work you lost, statutory and punitive damages where the violation is willful, and attorney’s fees, which is why we handle these cases on contingency. An employer that acted on the report without first giving you the copy and summary of rights the FCRA requires has a separate problem of its own. Vetty sits alongside Checkr, Yardstik, and the other gig-economy screeners in our background check company directory — and our background check error lawyer practice covers the rest, including when you can sue a background check company.
Rated by the Clients We Represent
Richard Kim is rated 10.0 out of 10 on Avvo, with 35 client reviews averaging 5.0 out of 5 stars (as of September 2026) — read the reviews on Avvo. Admitted in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; available to appear pro hac vice in other federal courts. You pay nothing unless we win.
Published by The Kim Law Firm, LLC — about attorney Richard Kim. Last updated October 2026.