Celene the Landbot Starting to Change Her Ways? You be the Judge.

Last night before I went to bed, I decided I was going to blog THIS STORY Michelle Lingiuan had shared with me a few days previous. She had lost a piece of land to landbot Celene Ballinger for $1L when she was trying to sell and it's contents to a friend standing right next to her so that the friend could edit a few things for her. Michelle was totally unaware that landbots existed and she admittedly made the error of setting it to sell to anyone thinking no one could beat the friend standing next to her. Michelle was very upset because she had just bought the land it set it up with her store. She attempted several times to contact Celene with no luck over the next few days. After the blog was posted last night I received a message from Celene starting that I had my facts wrong. She said that Michelle's Land was 1920 meters and not 4096 meters and that was true. In my first conversation I had with Michelle she told me she wasn't positive about the size. She had just bought the land and didn't pay attention to size. She basically told me that if I wanted Michelle to get her land back, I had better clarify the size error and then we would look at the idea of the land being returned because she had not resold it yet. Why the size makes any difference I'm not sure. She also told that she had been giving back errors for over 5 weeks, and well I knew this fact was false because I knew a few people who had lost land to her in the last 5 weeks. The first person I thought of was Jezebel Bailey who lost 22,112 meters to her for $1L and had to pay 6.5L a meter to get the land back. I also thought of Raver Bellows who lost 17664 meters of mainland to her for $133L. Both say they tried several times to contact her. The whole thing was really pissing me off, but she warned me if I wasn't nice that she would not return the land for spite, just like her profile states. And I think she was wanting me to blog that none of this was her fault because she doe's not violate the TOS and the blame should go on the person who made the error alone, but as anyone who reads my blogs knows, thats not how I feel. I think hiding under the TOS is cowardly when You are knowingly taking advantage of peoples errors. Well that conversation was earlier today.

A little while ago I get an im from Michelle. She says that she is talking to Celene. She said that Celene had contacted her earlier in the day but she was at work and camping so could not respond and she was talking to her again now. This was he first response from Celene, 5 days after the land had been bought. She said she basically felt she was being bribed with her land. Celene was telling her that if she posted on my original blog that she had made an error about the size, and that Celene was giving her the land back, that Michelle would get the land back. Or in Celene's words.. "Well you told her that I stole a 4096 from you when you actually sold the land to me, that needed to be corrected, i need you to post on that blog a comment that it was a 1920 and NOT 4096 and that you are actually talking to me to get your land back. I will check that in 15 minutes and set your land back, it would be best if you do that for us" Michelle decided it would be best not to post until after she got the land. To ad insult to injury, Celene even made Michelle say it was all her fault. Celene: I am sorry but I think your understand this wrong, You set the land for sale to "anyone", I bought the land before your friend did, that doesn't mean I took your land, you sold the land, do we understand each other here? [19:05] Michelle Lingiuan: yes i understand it was a mistake on my part. Michelle said she felt bad being forced to say those things but she had no choice if she wanted her land back. And Michelle did get her land back. So in this case, I suppose we have a happy ending.

With that said, I need to say that I do not feel sorry for having posted the blog in the first place. The only error in the blog was the land size, and I believed that to be true at the time I wrote it. I feel that the particular size had little to do with the situation as a whole. And given her tract record, and all of the past situations where she did not return land, I don't think I was out of line taking Michelle's story seriously. I find it odd that it took 5 days and a blog entry for Celene to respond to Michelle. I think it's dirty that Celene takes no responsibility for her actions. When You take a piece of land for $1L you know full and well that You are taking advantage of another persons error no matter what the TOS says. Trying to belittle the person and make them say it was all there fault is like rubbing salt into open sores. I hope Celene really is making a change and starts returning errors on a regular basis. This turned out to be a fairly happy ending for Michelle aside from a little humiliation. I wish I were able to say the same for Jezebel, Raver, and various others.