I have seen postings where people talked about bad neighbors and talked about getting revenge on them. I have often heard suggestions, but I’d be interested in people saying what they did to seek revenge on a bad neighbor, what was the outcome and how did you feel about it? Was the revenge satisfactory to you? Or did it leave you feeling worse?
I’m not talking about anything dangerous or illegal.
(reported for forum change)
Moderator Action
Since this is informally polling for personal experiences and seeking opinions, let’s move it to our opinion forum.
Moving thread from General Questions to In My Humble Opinion.
Not revenge exactly. Just a decent management company. There were a few calls to police regarding the couple living below me. Calls from me twice and at least one other by a different neighbor. I made sure management knew and that they were an ongoing nuisance at times that didn’t necessitate police. Management disallowed lease renewal and told them to move. Bye bye bitches.
I was living in an apartment building with assigned parking spots. One day, my spot was taken. I knocked on every door in the building, and finally, on the top floor, my question, “Are you parked in spot #2?” was answered with a hostile, “So what?”
I cannot tell you what pleasure it gave me to be able to say, “Your lights are on.”
(I was being truthful. He went sprinting downstairs (no elevator), and he was not the sprinting type.)
He didn’t thank me, but he did move his car and never parked there again.
Years ago in my “previous life” my then-boyfriend and I moved into a townhouse. When I politely introduced myself to the next door neighbour she looked me up & down and sneered “You’re just not going to fit in around here.” (Mind you, this was a lower-income neighbourhood, certainly not upper class or anything.) She was just plain nasty to us for no reason. The day we moved out I drained my aquarium and aimed the hose into her garage.
Around here, parking is tough and in the winter it gets worse. Pittsburgh even has a fine tradition of “parking chairs” - old chairs you put out to save the spot you just cleared.
Several winters back when we got one of our really heavy snows (12+ inches) I cleared a spot in front of my house so I could get the car out of the garage (located on the street behind my house) and pick up some rock salt for myself and my inlaws. I wanted the spot in front so I didn’t have to carry the heavy bags through the yard and up our steeper rear steps. Made myself a lovely spot with a pile of snow behind and most of it piled in the front yard. I did NOT in this case put out parking chairs.
Got back to find a pickup truck in the spot. I muttered several things under my breath, put the car in the garage, and then cleared a new parking spot. By loading all the snow in the bed of the truck. Piled about even with the roof. You could hear the springs sagging. Brought my car around front, unloaded it and put it back in the garage.
I knew the neighbor responsible for the truck. Never mentioned it to him or talked about it at all. But that was the last time he vultured a spot I shoveled.
I’ve told this here before, I think, but coming from the receiving end of neighbourly revenge, I always like to remind people that maybe sometimes your neighbour isn’t as bad as you think.
I was living in a townhouse complex and had a large, friendly, quiet dog. There were lots of dogs in the neighbourhood, and most of the owners were friendly and responsible. Shortly after moving in, I was walking my dog and she peed on a patch of grass in a large common area where dogs played and peed regularly, and we continued walking. A neighbour saw this happen, and tore a strip off me for not picking up after her. I explained politely and cheerfully that of course I would always pick up her solid waste (and showed my arsenal of baggies) but that she had only peed, so, well, what could I do? The neighbour flat out didn’t believe me, and despite the lack of evidence on the lawn, began to glare at me anytime she saw me, and several of her group of buddies did as well. Over the next few months or more, I was approached a couple of times by various neighbours telling me they regularly saw me leaving her crap on the grass, and a couple of notes as well. I started to walk her in a different neighborhood, but still I was being scolded semi-regularly. Finally one day I came home to find dog crap smeared all over my front door and stoop. I’m certain there were some very satisfied neighbours smugly congratulating themselves on their revenge. I cried and felt sad and uncomfortable living there for years.
Lived in North Minneapolis for 11 years. Crazy neighbors next door weren’t that bad, just well, the wife had mental health issues and the husband was odd. Just lots of small incidents of bizarre behavior, like hammering on the roof of his garage at 1am then being back out there at 6am. They also had 5 vehicles, only one of which was running.
When I moved into my now ex-wife’s house and my house was up for sale, I would go back every week or three to pick up more stuff and check on the place. Their working vehicle was parked slant-wise across my driveway, blocking both spots and with the rear bumper about 2" from my garage door, so I couldn’t get my stuff out of it. I knocked on their door several times, very loudly. No answer.
So I called the cops. They recommended having the car towed. Which I did.
I lived next to the neighbor from hell for over 30 years. He was a paranoid schitzophrenic, drug dealing idiot. It went way past wanting revenge, I just wanted him gone. Dead, moved it didn’t matter just gone. I stuck pins in a doll and put a curse on him causing a major stroke. The speed he was on might have contributed some also. Mission accomplished.
Reported a neighbor who had weeds growing over 2 feet high in their yard lawn to the city. The city sent notices and when that didn’t work, they cut the lawn and sent my neighbor a very high bill. Now he uses a lawn mowing service.
Called the cops on a crazy lady neighbor twice. She was jailed and eventually evicted from her home for non-payment.
When I lived in an apartment the neighbor upstairs use to have loud parties in the middle of the night. When I asked her to keep it quieter, she told me to go to hell. The building circuit breaker box was in the hallway near to my door so I would just go out and trip the breaker to her stereo. I enjoyed that, but it was a lot of work. So I changed a few of her 15 amp circuit breakers with 10 amp breakers. That helped keep things quieter for the 6 months before I moved out.
First, remind me not to make you angry.
Second, how do you make a voodoo doll?
This weekend we were out of town and when we came back on Sunday one of our neighbors had turned on our outside faucet to keep the pipe from freezing. Unfortunately they didn’t move the hose away from the house and apparently forgot they had turned on our water so our basement had partially flooded when we came home. No revenge is planned because they were trying to be kind but dammit that is kindness I could have done without.
I once had a neighbor from hell. I will not go into the gory details, lets just say the entire neighborhood was praying for them to move. The property was owned by a sweet old lady who had moved in with her son because she really had to. She had rented it to this jerk (kind word).
OK, OK, I will relate one thing that is typical of his actions. He once threw his trash into my bushes in the front yard. He did not just put his trash in my cans, no, into the bushes! He emptied the bags and kept those. I was so pissed off at him that I wanted to confront him. He refused to answer the door when I knocked.
Anyway, I am not sure if this was revenge, but it worked for us. Us being the entire neighborhood. I approached the sweet old lady about her problem renters. It soon became obvious that she could not deal with them. She did not have the strength.
After talking it over with my wife, I offered to buy her house for fair market value. She gladly accepted, I promptly evicted the jerk. I wish you-all could have seen his face when I served the papers. Priceless!
My neighbors became my defacto property managers, I never advertised and I always had the best renters. If one of my neighbors did not have a renter for me that they had vetted, another did. Worked well for me.
I have done this exact thing twice now. It works.
You’re a better than I am. I wouldn’t have told him his lights were on.
Our neighbor installed a fence in her front yard, nice and metal and looking like something you’d put up around the family plot to keep the sheep out. We didn’t really like it much, but it’s her yard.
We then installed a driveway between our houses, and the guys created a drop-off at the edge of her property, about 8" (houses in our part of St. Paul are elevated about 1’ above street level, with a little hill at the edge of the sidewalk, and they cut into that hill to make a more even grade). The pavers extended the asphalt to the base of the little dropoff, so that it wouldn’t crack off when we drove on it.
Our neighbor, a professor of law, felt that putting asphalt across the property line was inappropriate and we needed to go chisel it out so that they could do something to avoid the inevitable erosion that would be caused (not really sure what she had in mind, but she never did anything). To enforce her claim, she paid to have the property line surveyed so we could see exactly where the line was. And, yes, part of our asphalt was across the line, so I went out with a chisel and chipped the edge of my new driveway off.
Problem was, her house wasn’t square on the lot: the front left corner of it crossed the property line, and that corner of the fence was about 6" across the line. We had her move it. After she was done, it was still across the line, so we kind of kept that as a hole card in case she ever decided to be a bitch again.
I didn’t know my neighbor was a paranoid schizophrenic until she went off her meds to have a baby. Spied on me anytime I was at home. Poisoned our plants. Flipped off my grade school son. Just completely lost it if we were ever near the property line. Cleaned up after the dog maybe every two weeks in the dead of summer. The cops were called by someone else and she was taken away for a little rest a couple of times.
We had a white trash party, come as the neighbor you never want to have. I have some epic photos. Which probably wasn’t nice, but we were all out of sympathy by then and her husband did nothing to help. They finally moved and we had a little celebration party with cake and ice cream on the porch, watching them load up.
I would have told them the lights were on, and the rear window was broken. 
Not exactly “revenge”, but for some reason, when people come and go from the house to the east of me, they leave behind ladders. I’ve got 3 real nice ladders that were all abandoned at the house next door over the years. Not all from the same occupants.
3 separate times. 3 separate renters. 3 different ladders.
Weird. Weird. Weird.
They were all crappy neighbors, so I had no problem liberating the ladders. I treat them nice.
The current owner snuffed it last Christmas, but no ladder this time!
You stole ladders? :dubious:
“Salvaged.”