609 Letter

There’s nothing worse than finding inaccurate information on your credit report, especially if it’s dragging your credit score down. During your research, you may have read articles about a method of communicating with the credit bureaus called a “609 dispute letter.”

A letter sent to the bureaus requesting this information is actually not a dispute, but is simply a way of requesting that the credit bureaus provide you with certain documentation that substantiates the authenticity of the bureaus’ reporting. If the credit bureaus are unable to provide the requested documentation, it could indicate that the item may be inaccurate.

If you have bad credit or you’re trying to improve your credit score, you’ve probably heard of a 609 letter. A 609 letter is a credit repair method that requests credit bureaus to remove erroneous negative entries from your credit report. It’s named after section 609 of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a federal law that protects consumers from unfair credit and collection practices. Though section 609 doesn’t say anything about disputing information in a credit report it gives consumers the right to all information used to calculate their credit score. 

Under section 609, you have the right to request:

• All of the information in your consumer credit files
• The source of that information
• Each entity that has accessed your credit report within the past two years (unless it was to complete an investigation)
• Businesses that have made soft inquiries within the past year