Brandon Weaver is a popular credit repair author and YouTuber, mostly known for his 609 credit repair loophole. Please read this before taking his advice.
If you have bad credit, you’ve probably seen Brandon Weaver offering credit repair advice on YouTube. You may have read his book, “The Easy Section 609 Credit Repair Secret.” And now you’re wondering if this kid (who looks about 18 years old) is legit, or if he’s just a good marketer.
We’ve got you covered!
If you’ve asked:
- Is Brandon Weaver’s Section 609 loophole legal?
- Do his strategies actually remove negative items from my report?
- Can I actually do this on my own or do I need help?
- How much can I improve my credit score following his advice?
You’re in the perfect place!
In this article, we’ll look at Brandon’s teachings, review his book and YouTube videos, review The Awesome Life Group, and give our opinion about whether Brandon is someone you can trust.
☝️ Real quick: here’s what this article is NOT…
It’s not another scare tactic telling you how bad credit can stop you from qualifying for a home, auto loan, or even getting a cell phone.
You already know this, you are probably already feeling the stress of bad credit, and now you need answers!
By the end of this article, you’ll know what advice you should and should not take from Brandon Weaver. That will help you make the right decision about repairing your credit, whether it will be on your own or choosing to hire an expert to help.
Brandon Weaver: Overview and 5 Key Highlights
Brandon Weaver is a 35-year-old credit repair educator mostly known for his YouTube videos. If you watch him on YouTube it doesn’t take long to realize why he’s so popular.
He’s a good-looking, young guy and he seems like he genuinely wants to help. In an age when there’s so much staged BS out there, I appreciate that his videos are not overly “polished.” In other words, he starts a video with a rough outline of what he wants to say, but he doesn’t script it all out.
The result is he comes across as sincere, like a regular guy you’d love to hang out with, and he doesn’t push his book on credit services (too much).
A few highlights:
- He got into teaching credit repair because he had a poor credit score and taught himself how to repair it… and it worked!
- He is a prominent YouTube educator. Many of his videos have been viewed over 100k times, with his most popular video, “How I Fixed My Credit with 609 Credit Repair,” receiving over 3.2 million views.
- He owns www.609creditrepair.com, where he sells 609 credit repair letters and step-by-step video walkthroughs.
- He also owns Awesome Life Group, LLC, where he offers credit repair alongside co-founder, Cornita Pinchinat.
- Just for fun, he has also appeared in a few low-budget movies. Oh, and he’s ripped. Check it out.
Let’s dive into what he teaches about credit and whether it’s actually legit.
Brandon Weaver’s Strategies: What Are They and Can I Trust Them?
The first thing you need to know about Brandon Weaver is that he mostly teaches strategies for people with damaged credit.
In other words, if you’re 20 years old and have a bad credit score because you simply haven’t established credit yet, most of his strategies will not work for you.
But if you have negative items on your credit report such as:
- late payments
- charge-offs
- inquiries
- bankruptcies
- repossessions, collections, or judgments
Then you are the type of person Brandon is trying to help. Notice how his YouTube videos ALL seem to be about “removing” or “disputing” items from your credit report.
His help comes in two ways.
- He teaches DIY methods (Do-It-Yourself) to repair your own credit using his free or paid videos or his book.
- He offers professional credit repair services through his company, Awesome Life Group, LLC.
The 609 Credit Repair Loophole
Brandon is most popularly known for exposing this “609 credit loophole” and popularizing the dispute letters you can send the credit bureaus to get negative items removed from your credit file.
So is this a bunch of BS?
As it turns out, no!
This has actually been a common practice for years in the credit industry. Credit repair companies simply call them “dispute letters.”
Brandon is just the marketing genius to come up with a better trademarked sounding name for the strategy (The 609 Credit Loophole), which he popularized on YouTube in 2016.
How it Works
If you have a negative item on your credit report such as a late payment, you simply send a letter to the credit bureaus asking them to prove the debt/negative item really does belong to you.
The credit bureau has 30 days to respond offering proof. If they can’t, they must (by law) remove the negative item from your credit file.
Get Your FREE Section 609 Credit Dispute Letter Template
“I used your template and I went up 44 points. Thank you!” – Rochelle Cooper
Is that Legal?
Yeah, it’s legal.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, consumers have a right to dispute any suspected inaccuracies in their credit reports.
The credit bureaus mess up peoples’ credit files all the time. You should send dispute letters can even if you think the negative item really belongs to you.
A study by the Federal Trade Commission found that 1 in 20 people have a mistake on one or more of their reports that could result in a negative financial impact.
But I wouldn’t pay for Brandon’s letter templates to dispute an item on your credit report.
There are no “magic words” that get the credit bureaus to remove an item. The truth is they’re simply inundated and just by sending them a request to verify your debt, they may not have time to respond, so your negative item gets removed.
Of course, you need to send the letters to the right place and include certain items such as your account number, but it’s not that hard. You can get our free 609 letter templates, which show you everything you need to include, by clicking here.
Negative items on your credit file?
Our 609 credit dispute letters may be able to help get them removed.
Pros & Cons of Brandon Weaver Credit Repair Advice
Here’s the truth:
Brandon’s strategies can work…
… for some people. People with negative items on their credit that they want removed.
They don’t work when:
- You are just establishing your credit
- You don’t actually put in the work (or hire someone to help you)
- If you don’t have negative items on your report
So if you’re 30 years old and have never missed a credit card payment, but only have a 700 credit score, Brandon’s content is not really for you.
👉 Important: Brandon teaches credit repair rather than credit-building strategies. The truth is you shouldn’t just be repairing credit all the time. You also need to be adding new, positive credit history and types of credit to your file. This is credit building.
Credit Repair vs. Credit Building
Imagine an old, dilapidated house with a cracked foundation.
You want to build a beautiful home there but first, the house must come down and the foundation must be fixed.
That’s like credit repair (what Brandon teaches).
Credit repair is characterized by words like:
- repair
- remove
- dispute
- fix
- restoration
This is Brandon’s focus:
Now imagine putting up your walls, laying the floors, and adding plumbing, electric wiring, and a roof.
That’s like credit building (Brandon rarely discusses this).
Now, obviously, you can’t build that beautiful home only by getting to a good foundation (credit repair). You must also add positive items to your credit (credit building).
You can build your credit by doing some of the following:
- Get and use a secured credit card.
- Take out a credit builder loan
- Report your rent payments to the credit bureaus
- Report your utility payments to Experian
Check out these 11 ways to build credit, 8 strategies for rebuilding credit and these 5 ways to start building credit at 18.
Brandon Weaver on YouTube: Best Videos & Where to Start
The best place to start is by visiting Brandon’s YouTube channel here.
He organizes his best videos and credit videos by topic there under his “Playlists.”
As you can see, he mostly posts content about removing items from your credit file such as late payments, collections, evictions, student loans, hard inquires, medical collections, and more. Basically, it’s 99% about credit repair and restoration.
If you’re just starting out with credit repair, I’d definitely check out his #1 most viewed video of all time: “How I Fixed My Credit with 609 Credit Repair” (3.1 million views)
His other most popular videos are:
- Don’t Pay Collectors / Why You Should Never Pay Collections (300k views)
- Secret Ways to Remove Hard Inquiries from Credit Reports (269K views)
- Can This Letter Discharge Your Student Loans? (160K views)
Brandon Weaver’s advice: The Big Problem
There’s one serious problem with Brandon Weaver’s claims. That problem is summed up in this claim from his website.
Section 609 of the FCRA does not even deal with disputes or with a credit bureau’s right to report information.
In one of his videos, Weaver claims that “if they don’t have a signed document with your signature on it, they have to remove it [the adverse record]”.
This is also not true. There is nothing in the Fair Credit Reporting Act or any other law that requires a credit bureau to possess or produce an original signed contract.
A dispute letter may, sometimes, succeed in removing a legitimate account. The credit bureau or the creditor may have lost records or may simply fail to verify the account in time. You can’t count on that, and nobody can honestly promise it.
FinMasters Editors
How to Get 609 Credit Repair Letters Free
I personally wouldn’t pay for Brandon’s letter templates to dispute an item on your credit report.
There are no “magic words” that get the credit bureaus to remove an item.
The truth is that dispute letters work simply because Americans inundate the credit bureaus and just by sending them a request to verify your debt, they may not have time to respond, so your negative item gets removed.
👉 Here’s another truth. If an account really, legitimately belongs to you, nothing you do can force the credit bureau to remove it from your report. They do not have to produce a signed contract. There’s no magic trick that will force negative items off your credit report.
Do 609 letters really work?
Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t. If an account is really an error, the credit bureau is required to remove it. If an account is legit, you might luck out and get it removed, or you might not.
Either way, you need to do it correctly:
Of course, you need to send the letters to the right place and include certain items such as your account number, but it’s not that hard. You can get our free 609 letter templates, which shows you everything you need to include, by clicking here.
Get Your FREE Section 609 Credit Dispute Letter Template
“I used your template and I went up 44 points. Thank you!” – Rochelle Cooper
Review of Awesome Life Group, LLC
The Awesome Life Group, LLC is Brandon Weaver’s credit repair service, which he co-founded with Cornita Pinchinat. You can find them online at www.theawesomelifegroup.com.
Business Address:
According to Zoom Info, they are located at: 1725 Washington Rd. Ste. 400, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 15241
Business Phone:
(800) 360-3013
Time in Business:
It appears Awesome Life Group began offering credit repair services in Feb 2018, although they were gearing up and planning their launch as early as 2016.
In a Pennsylvania business entity search (public records), you can see they registered their LLC on 12/28/2016.
However, they did not record their Credit Services Organization Bond (a bond that protects credit repair organizations’ clients from any financial losses as a result of poor financial decisions), until 2/12/2018, as you can see here.
According to BondsExpress.com, a credit services organization in the State of Pennsylvania is not allowed to offer services until this bond has been purchased, which is why I suspect they didn’t officially start offering credit repair services until 2018.
The Price
According to his website, they charge a $199 set-up fee as well as $149 per month thereafter with no long-term contract and a 90-day guarantee “if your credit doesn’t improve.” They also offer credit monitoring for $21.99 per month through Identity IQ.
Their price comes in quite a bit higher than some of the lowest-priced credit repair services. Many services have been around a lot longer and offer packages as low as $99 for First Work Fee and $79.99 per month thereafter.
Services:
For a long time, the only service mentioned on their site was removing negative items. Now, according to their site, they offer a 3-phase plan to attack your credit.
- Phase One – They work to remove any negative, inaccurate, or outdated items on your credit file (they send dispute letters). This can take 1-2 months.
- Phase Two – If your credit is looking better, they offer counseling and strategies to add positive credit and increase credit lines. Brandon doesn’t talk about adding positive credit much on YouTube, but I like this phase. The best approach to raise your credit score is to repair the negative AND build positive credit. This phase lasts 2-3 months.
- Phase Three – This is when they give you the green light to apply for that mortgage or auto loan and provide additional consulting as needed.
Here’s a nice testimonial for Cornita and the Awesome Life Group from their site:
The Verdict
I think the verdict is still out on Brandon Weaver’s credit repair service. It’s very new (just started in 2018) and if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the business, it’s a lot easier to teach than to do.
It also has relatively few reviews compared to our top rated credit repair company, who has hundreds of 5-star reviews. Nor are they BBB accredited.
That said, the best I can offer is my “gut feeling” that Brandon and his team probably do a great job, and I’m inclined to trust him. There just isn’t much history there. But if you know and trust him from his book and videos, I certainly wouldn’t steer you away based on anything I’ve seen.
I would certainly encourage you to compare his service to some our top recommended credit repair companies, however.
Conclusion – We Heart Brandon!
In conclusion, we really like Brandon Weaver.
He’s a talented marketer who has found a way to help a lot of people with damaged credit. And I don’t think you’ll waste a penny buying his books, templates, or even credit repair. Although, the jury is still out on The Awesome Life Group as it is so new with few reviews.
But just know there may be other (free) options like our free 609 template letters, or this guide on how to build credit, and you may even want to compare Brandon’s credit repair services to some of these companies that have been in business a lot longer.
You truly are a class act when it comes to hating other people’s business. He is a young successful business entrepreneur that is doing more for the younger generation to help them get the credit back on track. Then that stupid as Donald Trump ass President!!! Yes, I said it!!! I also agree with Angela above, you simply. have to build a website to tear people down by mention all Brand Weaver has done… you need to get a life (including mentioning his low budget film). I would not ask for your help the way you speak to people and really so your character, how unprofessional you are, and how jealous you are of Brandon Weaver’s success so-called Chris Huntley. Then when someone corrects you on your behavior you become very defensive when you know you’re the person that is wrong post picture of Brandon like he is a criminal. I tell you what since I am the MOUTH OF THE SOUTH let me blast everyone on every Social Media to let everyone know not to use you as a Credit Consultant because it talks about people’s success. I wonder how you talk about your client behind their backs. Here… Read more »
Hi Ann, Thanks for your comments. Please see my response to Angela above. I have no idea where this is coming from. The review is 99% positive toward Brandon. I’m a big fan of his. And by the way, I don’t have clients. We run this website and are supported by advertisers. And his low budget film? Uh, that’s pretty cool if you ask me. Did you notice the other bullet points I listed in his resume? They are all positives. Why would you think that is a negative? I’m saying he is quite accomplished across the board.
Hi Chris.
Truth is those are probably bots that respond in anticipation of negative reviews.
There is definitely enough credit repair to go around instead of cutting down someone. Not to mention it makes your company look bad when you are cutting down someone else’s business to try to boost yours. Brandon’s system is incredible and has helped mine and several other family members Credit increase . The comment above that you said your only warning ppl his system is to fix bad credit not to help ppl with new credit was a great way to try and make your company look good. Brandon’s system is called Credit Repair so I am pretty sure the ppl that go on his channel are trying REPAIR their credit. I think it is really sad that you created this whole thing to tarnish someone else. Truly SAD
Hi Angela, I appreciate your feedback but I’m not sure you read the full article carefully. I would challenge you to list one negative thing I said about Brandon, because I can’t find one. I’m quite sure of that because I like Brandon and I wrote the article. I can, however, list at least 10 positive things I said about him. To say that he focuses on credit restoration rather than credit building is NOT an insult. It’s an important distinction. It’s true (and I think Brandon would agree) to say that a lot of people trying to build their credit are not right for his material. Some people need repair (his focus). Some people need to build new, positive credit history (not his focus). It’s like if a storm came through and broke a bunch of the windows on your house and damaged the roof. In that case, you would need home REPAIR. It would not, however, be the appropriate moment to call a contractor to build a second story on your house. I’m simply making a distinction that Brandon focuses on restoration rather than building positive new lines of credit using tools like credit builder loans and secured… Read more »
I have used Brandon Weaver’s system and have also followed his building credit advice. Love it and my scores have been soaring. When I helped a friend of mine with it her score went up 200 and my scores have increase over 110 points minus the times I applies for loans and credit cards. I highly recommend his program because even if you do not have bad credit you can learn how to avoid it and build your credit and if you do end up in that situation you can at least use a strategy to recover.
Hello Renee,
Thanks for your comment. That’s great to hear! We’ve heard lots of great feedback about Brandon. The point of the article is not to cut him down at all. It’s to warn people that his strategies mostly only work if you have a history of bad items (such as bankruptcy and late payments) on your credit record. There’s no point in “fixing” credit if you’re new to credit and simply need more time establishing a solid payment history. I don’t see Brandon cover those things often.
Yes you're covertly trying to manipulate what people think about him. It's a play on words that you use. Why trust YOU? We're not going to TRUST YOU!!!