buying samsungs abroad

So apparently buying a Samsung Galaxy S5 in Canada where I lived for 4years then bring it back to the UK with me. If anything goes wrong I am told I have to take it back to Canada.
I was incensed when I called Samsung to be told this. I purchased myself a Samsung Galaxy S5 at the end of last year in Canada. I have recently moved back to the UK. Oh and I should mentioned I purchased my partner an IPhone 6 at the same time and gave her the big song and dance how Samsung are that much better as you are not limited by memory capacity. We all know we can just buy a SD memory card and slap it in out phones with Samsung where as the iPhone you cannot do this. anyway to cut a long story short. My phone for some reason does not recognise my sd memory card or anyone else's for that matter. The card works fine in other people phones just not mine. Leading me to conclude its a phone issue and not a card issue.
I contacted Samsung about this and I was first advised to run a reboot of the phone. I did this and still the problem persists.
I then last week called Samsung again and I spoke to some customer service rep. I told him my story and how I got the phone from Canada in a Telus shop and that the phone had developed this problem. He went on to inform me the uk Samsung Engineers would not touch the phone and it was purchased in Canada and that the components would be different. I was shocked at this as Samsung is an International company and I thought the phones were all made in China. I had a suspicion that this rep did not know what he was talking about so I asked to speak to his manager. Not to complain about him but I felt he just lacked the knowledge I required to fix my problem. After being left on hold for a couple minutes the same rep picked up the call and informed me the manager was not willing to take my call as she would only say the same thing. This made me a little angry. I asked for his managers name which is Lucy and I said it was unacceptable that she would not take my call. I then went on to say that the phone is made in china and I had my doubts that it had uk or Canadian components in it. He replied that his manager said it was not the components that is the issue and that it was a software issue. I replied to him that phones are essentially computers now days and surely if your Engineers are worth anything they could figure out how to format my phone and put whatever software they needed to put on the fix my problem. He had no answer to this but he did suggest that I take the phone back to Canada or send it to a trusted friend in Canada and have them take it into a shop.
Now think back to my partners IPhone 6. She had an issue and called Apple. they sent her to a shop in Kingston. They took her phone and 90 mins later it was fixed.
I am completely incensed that Samsung would have me do the leg work and send my phone half way around the world to fix it. They did not even say. Send it to us and we will send it to whoever can fix it. Either Canada, Chine or timbucktoo. Wherever but I feel as a customer I should be able to bring my phone or tablet or any Samsung product to Samsung wherever I am in the world an they should take the goods and deal with it. I am extremely sorry I purchased this product. I also have an issue with my Samsung Tab which was also purchased in Canada but I am getting zero assistance from Samsung UK. Extremely disappointed and I am honestly thinking that apple products are the way to go purely from a customer service standpoint. Very very poor from Samsung.