Sprint exchange/warranty work on phone purchased from 3rd party?

I currently have an Epic 4g, and I'm thinking about the Epic Touch. I love the look of it, the features, the specs, now it's rootable, and it looks like it's getting *mostly* positive reviews on here. I'm seeing reports of a few bugs though, notably the signal strength issue.

So here's the question: I've never bought a phone anywhere but a Sprint store. If I do this, I'll be grabbing one from Wirefly or Anything4Wireless because I'm not even close to being eligible for my one year upgrade yet. Phones seem to be NOT easy to return to these places. Soo... what kind of manufacturer/Sprint support can I expect for issues with the phone? If I have issues, can I walk into a Sprint store and get it fixed? I know I'll still have manufacturer warranty (right?), but will Sprint do an in-store replacement or will it be a mail-it-back-to-Samsung-and-wait kind of thing? I'll definitely still carry TEP and I assume that will be unchanged, regardless of where I buy the phone?

Thanks for any insight...
Joe

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