I bought a used drone off of Adorama (a DJI dealer) some time aback and over time I saved up to purchase the new smart controller for the Mavic 3.

As I was trying to sync the smart controller to the Mavic 3 it says that I can add the smart controller but unless I get the previous owner to unbind the Mavic 3 the drone would quit working after 5 flights.

Now the person that originally bound the Mavic 3 to their DJI account is loooong gone.
How do I go about unbinding the dron from their account and to mine?

You need to return it to where you bought it,    that drone is locked and only the original owner can unbind it.

DAFlys Posted at 2-25 07:40
You need to return it to where you bought it,    that drone is locked and only the original owner can unbind it.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Unfortunately it has been some time since I bought the drone. Returning now won’t be feasible.

Hi, conrad2nr. Thank you for reaching out. Unfortunately, only the account holder has permission to unbind the drone with the account. This limitation is used to protect the ownership of the product. The new holder can bind the drone with another account. Please try to contact your dealer to confirm with the previous owner to log in to the account and unbind the drone first. Then you can log in to your account to bind it. Please ask the previous owner to download the DJI Fly and check if he can unbind it from the app.

If you or the dealer can't contact the previous owner, please contact our support at https://www.dji.com/support and send them the proof of purchase. If you have the proof of purchase, they can try to contact the previous owner. But we can't guarantee the result. We will wait for the owner's feedback and persuade them to unbind for you. Thank you for your kind understanding.