It's a universal practice to not cover return costs for warranty repairs on most goods, vehicles included, I thought..
Yeah but it's also a universal practice to not have to ship back to the manufacturer for warranty repairs. Imagine if everyones VW or Honda had to go back to Germany or Japan to be worked on.
While this definitely isn't one of those so the dealer experience wouldn't be expected to be the same, it does seem like they're unnecessarily putting the screws to him.