Two Indian bloggers thrased at Samsung's Mobiler's IFA, Berlin!

When the position of moon and stars are just not in favor, things are always bound to go wrong. After the great battle between two tech giants Apple and Samsung where the verdict went against Samsung with $1Billion fine towards patent infringement in USA court Samsung is back in news again. Clinton Jeff, blogger from India of unleashthephones.com fame is one of those two victims in Samsung’s Mob!lers event in Berlin who were threatened by Samsung! According to Clinton Jeff, he and a fellow blogger (who chose to remain anonymous) were invited to Samsung’s Mob!lers IFA Berlin, Germany and were covered for the flight tickets and Hotel accommodation. Jeff said, they were asked by the company if they were attending the event as Samsung’s promoters or reporters and it was made clear that the two would attend the same as reporters only.

The two bloggers were forced to jump into Samsung’s shoes and promote their devices failing which, the two would be denied of return tickets and Hotel stay. The two bloggers were flown by the company and abandoned them in a foreign country away from home.  

Advantage Nokia: Nokia quickly made a move to rescue the two by providing them return tickets and made the Hotel arrangements.

Samsung, realizing the damage caused to the image of the company and the products apologized to Jeff. The Samsung representative said:

I would like to reach out to you and deeply apologize to you for your experience in Berlin at IFA. We put you through undue hardship and we are trying to rectify the situation.

and more where as the company framed the whole incident to be a misunderstanding in public statement creating a huge difference with the two statements!

Samsung Mob!lers is a voluntary community of active Samsung mobile device users, who are offered the opportunity to participate in our marketing events across the world. At these events, all activities they undertake are on a voluntary basis. No activities are forced upon them.

We regret there was a misunderstanding between the Samsung Mob!lers coordinators and the relevant blogger, as we understand he was not sufficiently briefed on the nature of Samsung Mob!lers’ activities at IFA 2012. We have been attempting to get in touch with him.

We respect the independence of bloggers to publish their own stories".

Well, the wink-wink game did not work out for Samsung and Nokia rightly grabbed the PR opportunity! And jeff says this on twitter:

What do you think, bloggers need to be more cautious?