I bought a second hand Snoo and got home to find out it's bricked.

I admit to not properly educating myself before buying. But I found a Snoo local for a reasonable price ($500). I'm in the middle of the PURPLE crying phase and have very little bandwidth to do a deep dive into anything really. Seller was very responsive, had videos of it working, gave me his address, let me into the home. I met his wife and they were a really nice couple. I didn't see it work in person because he had already unpaired the device from his app. He told me he got it from a friend and was not the original owner. I had no reason not to believe him and trusted him.

I got home and went to pair it and got the flashing red light. I contacted Happiest Baby and gave them the SN expected them to quickly unlock/reset it. Was very disappointed when they told me the unit is allegedly "lost or stolen". They want it returned with original packaging.

The seller responded to me immediately and even reached out to Snoo himself to try and remedy this. He's offering a refund but I told him lets just see if we can get it sorted first. This whole thing is nuts to me. If this was a rental that hadn't been returned, how was the seller able to use it for months? He said he was gifted it from a friend. Maybe they only check every time it's registered in a new app? Also the balls of a company being able to claim something is their property with zero proof, on top of expecting it returned in the original packaging. I can see bricking it if it's legitimately stolen but to think I'm going to bend over backwards to give it to them after all of this. I've never heard of anything like this.

Other than ranting, I'm wondering if anyone has successfully disputed their Snoo being locked out? If I can get this working, I'd just use it with the free features, I don't think I want to give them a penny, much less send this thing back so they can continue this practice. Any help appreciated.