I don’t know about the Far East but the process works in Europe so it’s not USA limited. And you don’t need a UPS to pick up a padded envelope. 
If you want to speak to SanDisk directly look for links on the RMA link above. This is a users forum.
Good luck. 
BTW If you want speed I don’t recommend formatting removable drives with journaling formats. ie NTFS or ext4.
