This is a common trick attempted by the retail business - to focus on the warranty (where they dictate the terms) rather than your contract (where they often cannot). If you bought the device, you still have a contract of sale with the seller. The details depend on your jurisdiction.
Perhaps in the US the manufacturer can dictate the terms of your contract of sale, I don't know. But here in the UK they cannot - it is statutory.
When I attempted to have a broken Nexus 7 repaired or replaced here in the UK, the store focused on it being "out of warranty". I insisted that I was not claiming under their warranty, but under the contract of sale (the Sale of Goods Act in the UK) where depending on the nature of the goods and the advertised price the store can be liable for up to six years for manufacturing defects. Eventually, after insisting for a while, they made us good with a partial refund to cover the loss of use of the device subsequent to the failure, though it took us a while to negotiate a cash settlement rather than a store credit.
tl;dr: "out of warranty" is not necessarily the end of the story, although I don't know about the US.