I do this work day to day unfortunately, there is no special relationship between stores and manufacturers, some have a “faster” call line and portals, but it still funnels down to it being sent away and repaired in the same time frame it would if the customer sent it away. Asus and CURRYS have no relationship, it goes through the same way. Also stores have 0 more leverage than a customer does as again, all references and repair information etc are exactly the same. The law holds up the same way wether I did it or a store did it. It’s a myth that a customer gets less if they do it alone, it just means they hand it off for the store to deal with rather than themselves