You buy from China, you have to send it back to China so they can use the China spares.
You buy from a US distributor like NitecoreStore or Illumn or Battery Junction and you get to send it through them and the US spares get used.
That's not true in every case. I bought a Sunwayman V10R back in 2012 from Battery Junction and a year later, it stopped working on primaries, but continued to work on li-ions, which I exclusively used.
I contacted them, since I wasn't sure if I had exceeded 1 year (theirs is a 2yr. warranty) and they to send it in, that they would mail it back to China for repair/replace and that I would be on the hook for a $20 shipping fee. I even signed a paper to that effect and sent it in with the light.
Well, 2 months went by and I finally got an Email saying that they couldn't repair it and that they were out of the V10R, since the new V11R had already bowed.
They ended up sending me a brand new V11R and didn't charge me the $20.
I don't think that Battery Junction keeps many spare parts around for all of the brands and models that they carry. How could they?
I don't even know if they shipped the thing back to China, but I was happy and sad, since the V11R only came in black and I loved the tan color of my V10R.
I eventually bought a tan M11R from BJ, just based on that service alone, as well as a SWM D40A!
Chris