My neighbour kept stealing my parking spot – I got revenge but now people think I’m in the wrong

A woman has revealed how she got revenge on her neighbour who kept leaving aggressive notes on her car during a three-year parking row.

Earlier this week, the anonymous woman, believed to be from the US, posted on Reddit’s ‘Am I The A*****’ forum to ask if she had been wrong to get her own back on a difficult neighbour.

Shortly after moving into their new building almost three years ago, her and her partner discovered their allocated parking space was far too small for their car.

She explained: ‘Our bay’s wall had a jutting out pillar at the front, so you could only come into it at an angle and could never drive out straight as you would hit the pillar.

‘If a car was next to the bay, you wouldn’t be able to drive out at all and vice versa.’

‘We knew that if someone was in the bay next to ours, we should just park elsewhere and use our bay when there was room to fit in.’ 

A few months ago, the woman said their neighbour – who she gave the fake name ‘Patrick’ – demanded that they stop using their bay as the angle of their car affected his ability to park.

After his ‘aggressive’ notes failed to intimidate the couple, he then proceeded to start parking across their spot too.

She continued: ‘Instead of parking elsewhere like we would do when he visited, he proceeded to park 1/3 in the bay, deliberately blocking us in and stopping us leaving our home.’ 

After a while, she opted to pay for other parking to avoid the confrontation with him.

But recently, she purchased a new car and decided to start parking in her spot again.

She wrote: ‘Of course I immediately was getting blocked in.

‘At one point I had to crawl through my boot, take my handbrake off and physically pull the car out of the bay. Enough!’

The woman’s neighbour started leaving aggressive notes on her car – leading to her paying for parking elsewhere

Determined not to be bullied by him any longer, the woman decided to give him a taste of his own medicine. 

She added: ‘I parked right down the middle of our two bays and blocked him out the area entirely.’ 

Unsurprisingly, she found more aggressive notes from him when she returned to her car.

She said: ‘I had notes from him telling me that “on behalf of all residents” (it wasn’t) I need to park elsewhere/move over (so I can be blocked).

‘It was an attempt to blame me in front of the other cars as an excuse for what he later did – he had parked horizontally in front of my car, blocking all residents from moving.’

Following this, she felt like she had no other choice but to contact her building’s management team – who have now introduced a first come, first served policy. 

As a result, she now feels people are blaming her for his parking even though they do not know the grief she has been given.

Many posters said she should have sorted this with her management company years ago and not let it escalate 

Other members of the forum were quick to weigh in on the woman’s dilemma. Although many agreed the neighbour was in the wrong, the majority argued that she should have dealt with it sooner. 

One said: ‘You should have immediately taken this issue to your building manager years ago. Especially when it escalated to you being blocked in, which becomes a safety issue.’

Another pointed out: ‘Park in your spot and only your spot and take it up with building management if anyone else is in your spot.’

Meanwhile, a third said: ‘Your building is unnecessarily causing you and everyone else conflict all these years. The right person to yell at is your building management.’