No, they’re protecting themselves against a significant volume of fraudsters who order genuine high-value goods and return counterfeits. These people are more than capable of re-shrinkwrapping boxes after opening them.
It’s likely there’s a significant queue of potential counterfeits that Amazon needs to go through. If you bought/returned this during a period of otherwise-high volume (e.g., right after a release), there’s a particularly high chance that the volume of “real” returns temporarily swamped their normal capacity. Or maybe their capacity just lags behind what it ought to be.
Either way, they’re protecting themselves and this almost certainly has nothing to do with Apple specifically.
It’s likely there’s a significant queue of potential counterfeits that Amazon needs to go through. If you bought/returned this during a period of otherwise-high volume (e.g., right after a release), there’s a particularly high chance that the volume of “real” returns temporarily swamped their normal capacity. Or maybe their capacity just lags behind what it ought to be.
Either way, they’re protecting themselves and this almost certainly has nothing to do with Apple specifically.