If a delivery app, a staffing platform, a youth-sports league, or an employer turned you away after a Yardstik background check, the report behind that decision is a consumer report under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Yardstik was built for the gig economy, where screening runs at volume and decisions are often automated, and that is exactly where a wrong match does the most damage. The law does not change with the technology: you have the right to see the report, to dispute it free of charge, and to be compensated when an error costs you work.
What Yardstik is
Yardstik, Inc. is a Minneapolis company founded in 2020, venture-backed and independent, according to its own site and local business press. Its help center states that “as a CRA (Consumer Reporting Agency), Yardstik is bound by the FCRA requirements for dispute filings,” and the company announced Background Screening Credentialing Council accreditation in 2022, which the Professional Background Screening Association lists among its accredited firms. It sells criminal-record searches, driving records, drug and DOT testing, employment, education, and license verification, healthcare screens, social-media checks, identity and fraud detection, and continuous monitoring, and it names gig and marketplace platforms such as TaskRabbit, Gopuff, and Bellhop, plus staffing, logistics, childcare, and youth-sports organizations, among its customers. Applicants meet it through the Yardstik Profile portal. When it assembles those records and sells them to a platform or employer, it is a consumer reporting agency with every duty the FCRA imposes.
Where these reports go wrong
High-volume, automated screening fails in predictable ways. A name-and-date-of-birth match can attach a stranger’s conviction to your file — the same failure that produces a mixed credit file; a charge that was dismissed can be reported as pending or as a conviction; an expunged or sealed record can surface from a database the court never updated; and a non-conviction older than seven years can appear even though the FCRA bars it. Continuous monitoring adds a new risk: an alert generated months after hiring, based on a record that is not yours, can end a job you already had.
The disclosure you should have seen before the check ran
An employer cannot order a background report on you for employment purposes unless it first gives you a clear and conspicuous written disclosure, in a document that consists solely of that disclosure, that a report may be obtained, and you authorize the report in writing (15 U.S.C. § 1681b(b)(2)(A)). The Federal Trade Commission’s guidance to employers puts it plainly: the notice must be in writing and in a stand-alone format, and it cannot be in an employment application. On a platform, that disclosure usually arrives as a screen in the sign-up flow, so take a screenshot of it, with the date, if you can. Whether these employment rules apply to someone a platform treats as an independent contractor is unsettled, as our Vetty page explains, but the screening company’s own accuracy and reinvestigation duties apply either way.
How to get your report and dispute it
Yardstik handles disputes and report copies online. According to its help center, you log in at profile.yardstik.com, open the screening, and use “Report an Error” to file a dispute, or “Download Report” to get a PDF of your own file; the company says most disputes are resolved within 30 days, and some take up to 45. It publishes a general support line, 1-888-278-5042 (weekdays, 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Central), and a support form, but no dispute email or mailing address, so the portal is the channel. Save a dated copy of what you submit and every reply — screenshots count — because that record is what later shows the company had notice and kept reporting anyway. An employer that ordered the report must also give you a copy, with a summary of your rights, before it acts on it. Our guide to disputing a background check covers what the dispute should say.
Why a dispute should take 30 days, not 45
Yardstik’s help center says most disputes are resolved within 30 days and some take up to 45. The statute allows the longer period in one situation only. A consumer reporting agency must finish a reasonable reinvestigation within 30 days of receiving your dispute, and that period may be extended by no more than 15 days only if, during the 30 days, the agency receives information from you that is relevant to the reinvestigation (15 U.S.C. § 1681i(a)(1)(A)–(B)). Even then, there is no extension if within the 30 days the agency finds the item inaccurate or incomplete, or determines that it cannot be verified (§ 1681i(a)(1)(C)). The practical rule is to send everything with the first dispute, so that a document sent later does not hand the company 15 more days. When the reinvestigation is finished, the agency must give you written notice of the results within five business days, with a copy of your report as revised (§ 1681i(a)(6)), and it must promptly delete or modify anything it found inaccurate, incomplete or unverifiable (§ 1681i(a)(5)(A)).
When it becomes a legal claim
Consumer reporting agencies must follow reasonable procedures to assure maximum possible accuracy, reinvestigate what you dispute, and delete what they cannot verify. A stranger’s record on your report, a dismissed charge reported as a loss, 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 without the pre-adverse action copy the FCRA requires has a separate exposure of its own. Yardstik sits alongside Checkr, Vetty, 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.
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Published by The Kim Law Firm, LLC — about attorney Richard Kim. Last updated October 2026.