FWIW we have a Fry's Electronics store here in my town, not that it means much as they are all but out of business, store nearly empty of inventory.
But years ago when their business was booming, they had a procedure for returning sold/returned items to the shelf. They would test and if functional, say like a returned motherboard that would properly POST, they'd tape the box up, put a sticker on that offered roughly a 15% discount and identify it as a restock item. If the same item was returned a second time they had a similar sticker to this "invalid serial number" that was bright orange and said "Return Limit Exceeded - Not for Sale" and that was supposed to identify items to not return for sale. More often than not these items were credited by the vendor/distributor and then trashed into a recycle bin.
Well one year a seasonal employee working the holiday season had the bright idea to put these stickers on things he "wanted" and then would toss them in the recycle bin and retrieve them later. Then that escalated to items he could sell on Craigslist and numerous PC components like motherboards and graphics cards that were in demand wound up on CL with these "Not for Sale" stickers on them. If they then proved to be defective people would try and return them to Frys as the sticker said "Frys" in fine print.
A few years later they had an issue when they started doing orders online and then pick up in person, with an untrained worker taking these "not for sale" items and fulfilling orders, placing them in plain cardboard boxes for pickup. He did so as a result of poor training and it being a shorter walk to the returns items than pulling things from the shelves.
Lastly as they have been running into the ground and laying off employees like crazy they had a now "former" employee his last few days there place these stickers on items all over the store as an act of vengeance hoping it would cost Fry's sales. Needless to say most were discovered by customers before employees making people question the quality of the goods being sold, even though most were new unopened items.
My point is that it is unlikely that sticker originated from DJI and the "doom and gloomers" responding with statements like "its not a valid DJI product" are likely overreacting. It could be as simple as a returned item because someone had buyers remorse and whoever processed the return placed the wrong sticker on it, or misunderstood what sticker should have gone on it, again that time of year with temp workers. It could have been an employee trying to scam Amazon by placing that sticker on a returned item hoping to get a huge discount or find it in the recycle bin only to have another temp worker fulfil an order with it. Honestly the most likely scenario is a returned item that got the wrong sticker and placed back into inventory by a seasonal worker who didn't know any better or just didn't care enough to do it right. A lot of people successfully buy "open box" items which is a nice way of saying things that are still effectively new, but had been opened and returned usually because it was not the item they wanted or decided it was too expensive.
Had it been otherwise sealed and DJI not having it on a stolen item list, it would have likely been fine.
But years ago when their business was booming, they had a procedure for returning sold/returned items to the shelf. They would test and if functional, say like a returned motherboard that would properly POST, they'd tape the box up, put a sticker on that offered roughly a 15% discount and identify it as a restock item. If the same item was returned a second time they had a similar sticker to this "invalid serial number" that was bright orange and said "Return Limit Exceeded - Not for Sale" and that was supposed to identify items to not return for sale. More often than not these items were credited by the vendor/distributor and then trashed into a recycle bin.
Well one year a seasonal employee working the holiday season had the bright idea to put these stickers on things he "wanted" and then would toss them in the recycle bin and retrieve them later. Then that escalated to items he could sell on Craigslist and numerous PC components like motherboards and graphics cards that were in demand wound up on CL with these "Not for Sale" stickers on them. If they then proved to be defective people would try and return them to Frys as the sticker said "Frys" in fine print.
A few years later they had an issue when they started doing orders online and then pick up in person, with an untrained worker taking these "not for sale" items and fulfilling orders, placing them in plain cardboard boxes for pickup. He did so as a result of poor training and it being a shorter walk to the returns items than pulling things from the shelves.
Lastly as they have been running into the ground and laying off employees like crazy they had a now "former" employee his last few days there place these stickers on items all over the store as an act of vengeance hoping it would cost Fry's sales. Needless to say most were discovered by customers before employees making people question the quality of the goods being sold, even though most were new unopened items.
My point is that it is unlikely that sticker originated from DJI and the "doom and gloomers" responding with statements like "its not a valid DJI product" are likely overreacting. It could be as simple as a returned item because someone had buyers remorse and whoever processed the return placed the wrong sticker on it, or misunderstood what sticker should have gone on it, again that time of year with temp workers. It could have been an employee trying to scam Amazon by placing that sticker on a returned item hoping to get a huge discount or find it in the recycle bin only to have another temp worker fulfil an order with it. Honestly the most likely scenario is a returned item that got the wrong sticker and placed back into inventory by a seasonal worker who didn't know any better or just didn't care enough to do it right. A lot of people successfully buy "open box" items which is a nice way of saying things that are still effectively new, but had been opened and returned usually because it was not the item they wanted or decided it was too expensive.
Had it been otherwise sealed and DJI not having it on a stolen item list, it would have likely been fine.
