I tend to work from home mostly, as we are not given postgrad working space at uni and I find it hard to work in the libray. Anyway, I have recently moved and my neighbours are driving me insane. They are always shouting at their kids, then of course their kids scream and cry (this goes on intermittently all day long) and their TV is extremely loud all day, they also slam every door in the house.
I have already asked them politely if they could be quieter as I work from home and they claimed that they weren't noisy because their kids are at school (what!?)! Not particularly keen on approaching them again... am I being overly fussy here?? (the shouting & screaming starts about 6.30am and wakes me up, then stops at about 8/9pm).

I had last year in my old house. They communicated by shouting and when that didn't work they screamed.. Plus I think they wanted to make sure their child definitely knew her name because they were forever shouting it over and over and over again.

I think the problem often is that what you see as noise, they see as normal. We just had to grin and bear it unfortunately :o(

I saw this today and thought it was apt :)

http://www.savagechickens.com/blog/2008/03/neighbours.html

I have underneath neighbours who live like bats. Yap yap yap yap at 3am every morning. I'm going to have their bed attached to the ceiling so they can sleep upside down.

But seriously, it is annoying. I'm useless at uni when they've kept me awake. You don't want to cause bad feeling, but you shouldn't put up with it.

I just don't know what to do really.. I guess I should talk to my lettings agent however the father (the noisiest one!) works for them and I think they are quite chummy
To think we moved out to the sticks for peace and quiet - I think this is what bugs me most!!!! Ours are the only houses in the area so it's not as if I can anonymously complain either!

I find that opera made a nice fight back!

Something with a very shrill and high soprano that goes on and on--the sort of breaking glass sounds is ideal---played at volume when the neighbours are at volume---it works wonders! You tube has some good soprano clips if you are not an opera aficiando...just find some soprano ones and let them rip. I did this with a noisy neighbour who forgot to turn off or slept through his very loud alarm clock...I put my clock radio onto an opera station at full blast next to the wall..a night of this and the alarm clock problems ceased...

There is also about a seven minute rendition of Rule Britannia sung by a high soprano on You Tube. its actually a nice version of the song, so it will not drive you insane while you play it at high volume. The nice thing is that at seven minutes, it gets the point across to the neighbours....and if not, a second play does the trick!

Back in the States I had neighbours that played really bad really loud country music...so I used to find classical music with screetching sounding violins and tubas and things, and turn it up really loud to drown out the country music...same thing when someone in a pick up truck that was more rust than truck pulled up with annoyingly loud country music--I would crank the classical music in my car stereo, roll my windows down and warble along in the best fake soprano voice I have....really loud and annoying people have an allergy to opera and classical music and this works to shut them up!

mokey, i think tricky and olivia's advice combined would work. the problem is that while they are being loud, they don't notice. but if you were having a fight with your partner or kids, and then suddenly you'd hear loud music from your neighbours, you'd realise instantly that they are probably hearing you, too. and you'd shut up or at least tone down, no?
i mean, how are they to really understand how loud they appear to you through the walls, if they never hear anything from you?
so if you moved there for the quiet, maybe you need to spend some effort to educate your neighbours!