Samsung also privately apologized to Jeff for the experience and undue hardship he was put through.

Just like your mother told you: 'There is no such thing as a free lunch'

While this story is a distressing one, and I'm glad that Jeff and his fellow blogger are no longer stranded in Berlin, the question remains: why were they accepting trips from Samsung in the first place?

The Next Web points out that this type of offer is in no way uncommon, especially in the tech industry -- and it's not. Established tech companies routinely offer to pay for trips, and in other cases offer lavish gifts (such as decked-out laptops, etc.) to writers, editors, and bloggers, in hopes of reaping good reviews. I, myself, have been offered many trips, but I always turn them down -- mostly because I took a journalism ethics course in college, but partly because, well, let's just say that the last trip I was offered was to the middle of the Arizona desert and do you really want to get stranded in the middle of the desert?

Though programs such as Samsung's Mob!lers program makes it easier for bloggers -- especially bloggers who are independent and don't have the backing or resources of a larger publication, such as PCWorld -- to get their hands on hot technology right away, it's still a murky situation. And I'm not the only one who thinks so: the who accept gifts, or "payola," in return for positive reviews.