In May last year my husband and I (with some friends helping) had to take down a tree in our front garden as it was looking like it might come down uncontrolled of its own accord. Things did not go to plan and it fell into our neighbours garden, breaking a stone birdbath and damaging 2 Leylandii forming part of their hedge. We apologised (a lot) and said we would obviously pay for any damage/replace items.
It's not really relevant but he was an arse. DH and I agreed that if the roles had been reversed, we would have at least checked if everyone was ok, then grabbed our chainsaws and helped clean up. Our neighbour came out, got angry (understandable) but stood taking photos "in case he needed them at a later date" or standing with his arms folded making nasty comments as the 5 of us cleaned up the mess we'd made. I did ask him at one point to stop saying the things he was saying.
Later that night we set up a whatsapp group with the 4 of us. DH apologised again and repeated that "we are happy to settle reasonable costs/replace and damaged items". We got an amicable response saying had the bushes been broken they would need replacing but it's just skinned some bark off 2 of them so "they'll survive for a time" (I'll be honest, the 'for a time' hadn't meant anything to me until I re-read the message this morning), and that the bird bath base is fine and they'd get a replacement top.
A couple of weeks later (I think, it was a long time ago!), I saw his wife gardening so I went out to talk to her and said we hadn't settled up regarding the bird bath. She told me not to worry about it. I think she said they had found a replacement, but I might be remembering that incorrectly. She assured me not to worry about the money.
For the last 18 months he has blanked us completely, every time we've tried to say hi. He's a bit of an odd character (public forum!! I'm being polite...) so we didn't lose sleep over it. His wife has always been perfectly lovely.
Last night, 18 months later, we received another message on the whatsapp group. He complained we never went round and had a conversation and demanded £360, providing their bank details. £80 for the bird bath (or gave us the option of buying one for them and deducting it from the total, which we would never do without knowing what they wanted) and £280 for 2 Leylandii. A quick google tells me a 5ft Leylandii costs £18 and a 7 ft Leylandii costs £45 - I'm not much of a gardener so there may be subtleties about Leylandii I'm missing but how much variation can there be!!
DH and I are livid as our understanding was that it was all resolved 18 months ago. I'm more upset because I've lived in a LOT of places and always got on with my neighbours and now we've bought what we considered to be a long term/forever home we end up with this kind of tension. DH is just really angry about the way this guy has gone about things and feels he is trying to rip us off, and that had he subsequently decided the bushes needed replacing our neighbour should have come and had a conversation. I agree with DH btw. While I don't really want to, I've said to DH I want a face to face conversation as i don't think whatsapp is helpful (unless documenting any agreement after the fact) but they have people over at the moment and I'm out tomorrow night so it will have to wait until Wednesday. I’m tempted to just let him reply to the message but I want to be the bigger person/people and feel like we’ve made an effort to clear things up properly. I am under no illusion, knowing this guys character that there is no rose-tinted outcome here.
On the one hand, how has this gone on for 18 months! My point of view is that taking all the behaviour out of the equation we did damage their property and should be willing to pay REASONABLE compensation, which in my view is NOT £360.
Am I being too soft? too hard?