The eCredable blog
You can't report utility bills to the credit bureaus by yourself, but you can hire a third-party service provider to do it on your behalf.
Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, most negative information can be reported on credit reports for seven years. Why seven? Why not five, or 10 or some other amount of time?
A credit report is a pretty simple concept: It’s a report on your past use of credit and loans. That part is generally pretty easy for people to grasp. It’s some of the other stuff on the report — and the stuff that’s not on the report — that confuses some and leads to misunderstanding the credit report’s purpose.