Hi,

It's 3am and I can't sleep due to the lady downstairs and found this forum (thanks to Google). I've read a few of the posts on here and wondered if someone could give be any advice? I'm a bit new to the whole noisy neighbour thing and fear I may be doing things wrong...

We moved into our new flat (rented) at the beginning of November and are tied in to a year contract - it's a small block of only 9 properties (not a new build) and is laid out so that each no one is connected (aside from upstairs and downstairs). We are on the first floor, so sandwiched between two floors. Our problem is with the lady downstairs.

Since we moved in we have been able to hear her TV. It's so loud that we can't actually hear our own sometimes. I normally watch my TV with a volume level of around 15-20 but turned it up to 50 once (which was unbearable) but we could still hear hers downstairs. This happens during the day (which I'm not too bothered about) but started to more frequently start around 10/11pm (when we usually got to bed) and continue anywhere from 2-6am. We put up with it for a quite a while... as you tend to do. No one really wants to cause problems when you've just moved in.

Around mid Jan it got out of hand, it became every night until 6am. I contacted my landlady to see if she knew who lived downstairs and explained the problem.
She advised to knock and complain to them and that if it continued to be a problem she could contact the management company of the building. I approached my housemate and asked her to come downstairs with me at some point during the following week.

That night (a Sunday) the TV was extremely loud (possibly louder than before). I'd had no sleep at all over the weekend from the noise and was worried I wouldn't be able to function at work. At 2.30am I made the decision to go downstairs to ask them to turn it down. I first went outside the building to double-check which property the noise was coming from (where I could hear the noise coming from the downstairs flat). I also listened at the front door of the downstairs flat. You could clearly hear the TV was coming from their property.

I rang the doorbell, the TV stopped and an older lady answered the door (almost immediately). I told her that her TV had been keeping us awake and asked her to turn it down. She told me that there was no TV coming from the flat, that they’d both been in bed asleep and I was mistaken. I asked her not to lie to me, as it was past 2am and I’d had no sleep for the last three nights due to the TV. She said she wasn’t lying. I said that I could clearly hear the TV from the front door, and that I’d even been outside the building to check. She again said that she wasn’t lying that no TV had been on. She agreed that sometimes she has her TV loud, but not tonight. She was quite adamant about it. I again asked her to keep the noise down, as we both have full-time jobs upstairs and need to sleep at night. She repeated that it wasn’t her and that she’d been asleep and that I had woken her up, even when I said I knew she wasn’t being truthful. I told her that I would have to call the police if the noise continued this loud, late at night. She again said it wasn’t her making the noise, so I gave up and went to bed. The noise did stop.

In the morning I contacted my landlady as I wasn’t confident the noise would stop and she forwarded our complaint to the management company of the building.

Over the next week and a half the TV noise did seem to get slightly better, although we could still hear it (even over our own TV)… it did seem to stop around midnight and it wasn’t as bad as before so we put up with it. There were one or two nights that it was really bad again, but we hoped it was a one off (it might have been over a weekend).

Tonight (Thursday) I was woken at 12.15/30am by loud noise from the TV from downstairs. The noise continued (as loud as before) and at 1.15am I went down to ask the lady to turn it down – I have to be up at 6.30am for work as we have a rush job on.

The conversation went a bit like this (as you can tell it's still fresh in my mind)...

The same older lady answered the door, and her response to me asking her to turn her TV down was: It’s not loud... I said it’s 1.20am, and we can hear your television from our bedrooms, it’s keeping us awake. I have to be up for work at 6.30am and can’t sleep because of it. Please can you turn it down.
Her reply: I’m old and I sleep less than you. It’s not loud.
She then asked if we have always heard it since we moved in, I replied yes. She said: If you have a problem you should have come down and told me sooner… I said we are reasonable people so let it go at the start. Her response was that no one else had ever complained before and that we were being unreasonable by complaining. She said she had turned it down since I’d last been down and threatened her. She asked if we could still hear it. I said yes. She replied, well why haven't you said anything.

She then again accused me of threatening her last time, when she’d fallen asleep whilst watching the TV, which is why she’d turned the volume down. I corrected her and said I'd told her I’d call the police, but hadn’t threatened her personally. I also said, she’d lied to me last time and said her TV wasn’t on (even though it was). She told me she hadn’t lied, she’d fallen asleep and I did threaten her. She then started to raise her voice, accused me of starting an argument, being threatening, harassing her, saying that she was elderly and I had no right to come down here at night, that there were elderly people in the building who had had strokes and cancer and that you can’t just ring their door at night. I said I’m not here to cause an argument I just want to sleep, it’s gone 1am and your TV is keeping me again.

She asked me if we sleep in the lounge. I said no, the bedrooms, with the door shut, and both myself and my housemate can hear your TV. She then wanted me to come into her flat to listen to the TV, which I declined as I didn’t feel comfortable doing that. I told her I didn’t need to as I heard it clearly from her front door before I rang the bell. She then continued to say that I was harassing her and that she had turned her TV down since our last complaint. She said if I came down again she would send two people up to my flat to harass me. She told me she’d welcome a call from the noise police in the future. I decided it was best to leave at this point.

I'm a female, in my late twenties, average height and build and both times I've gone down alone (in my pjs) and haven't raised my voice. She's an older lady, I'd say over retirement age, around the same height and build as me.

Obviously I'm now worried that my behaviour has been threatening (although I've never raised my voice to her, and have always stood well back from her doorway). I tried to ask her to use headphones late at night, but was interrupted each time. To be honest, she wasn't really interested in what I had to say. Just kept repeating I was threatening/harassing her.

I've written all this down as have read on here that you should start keeping a diary, but am not sure what else I should be doing? Should I ask my landlady to complain again? It's unlikely that I will go down there myself once more. I'm also worried about retaliations now. I seemed to be dammed if I do complain, or dammed if I don't.

Does anyone have any good advice for me?

Thanks in advance
Jen

PS. I apologise for any bad spelling/grammar. I should have been asleep along time ago...