Lawsuit against Amazon
In 2015 Amazon, one of the giants of the online sales was involved in an accusation due to an alleged violation committed against a potential worker, when conducting a background credit check on him without his consent.
As it was stated by the plaintiff itself, Amazon never offered him the possibility for contesting or for clarifying the results obtained in his background credit report; and as a consequence of the misusing of these results, the candidate was deprived of the possibility of working for this enterprise.
The plaintiff argued that Amazon clearly violated his rights under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) when realizing a procedure without previous consent; besides that he also accused the enterprise that its job application forms had a disclaimer that also violated the laws established by the FCRA.
On top of that, once Amazon took the decision of not hiring the person, a copy of the consumer’s report used for taking the rejection decision was never delivered to the potential worker.
Any employer that conducts a background check or a credit report check must be in compliance with the federal laws that protect the consumer and are stated in the FCRA; otherwise, the reputation of the employer could be seriously harmed.
We arrive to an important conclusion in this case: when conducting a background check of any kind, it is extremely important to ask for the written consent of the person on which the background check will be conducted, and to inform the person of his/her rights of having a copy of the results so they can be checked and contested if it is necessary.
The Drakonx’s background check investigators take very seriously the compliance with the law, and we help our clients so they also are in compliance, avoiding in this way exposures to risks in possible sanctions or lawsuits.
Drakonx Background Check Investigators