Last year before Purim I noticed that on boxes of a particular candy there were stickers with a “Kosher” seal on them. the boxed contained a hechsher printed on the label also – a symbol that I did not recognize. I asked one of the purchasers for the store and was told that the story behind the sticker is that somepeople want to have a local hechsher – someone they know – so this person puts his sticker on the packages and certifies them “kosher.”
I noticed that packages without the printed on hechsher also contained his stickers. This concerned me so I called the Company and they told me that only 1 agency comes to visit the plant and they gave me the name of the Rav and that matched the symbol printed on the box. They also told me that the product in question was kosher even though the box did not contain the printed on hechsher. I called the Rav and he confirmed and emailed me a list of all the kosher products at that company and which ones had printed symbols and which ones did not. In addition, I asked the Rav if the other Rabbi with the stickers ever contacted him to ascertain that this was so and I was told that he had not. Both the Rav of the Supervising Agency and the Company were surprised to hear that someone else was putting their kosher symbol on the product.
So the “sticker” Rabbi authorized his stickers to go on products for which he never supervised nor even checked with the supervising agency. I advised my family that 1) we do hold by the hechsher of the Rabbi whose name is on the sticker. 2) we do not rely upon stickers of anyone unless we verify that there is proper supervision performed by that person or it has a hechsher on the package that we trust.
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For purposes of full disclosure, I did not contact the “sticker” Rabbi for his version.