Am I entitled to get the Iphone Repaired for Free?

I have always been a die hard fan of Apple products but a recent drama/event has changed my mind completely.

I am just wanting to know what are your thoughts around this matter and any suggestions on how I can go forward with it?

The story goes like this...(I have already cut the story short, there are bits here and there that frustrates me)

I bought my mum an Iphone 7 plus in Japan around end of Dec 2016.

About one month ago the phone failed while mum was charging the phone. She put the phone to charge and when she returned the phone was extremely hot so she unplugged the phone straightaway. The phone would not turn on ever since.

I rang up Apple Care Support New Zealand as we live in New Zealand. They told me to bring the phone into the local service center, which I did. The service center did their thing and found the phone is broken. Initially Apple was happy for proceed with the repair and will pay for the repair. After a week of waiting, they concluded that no one can repair the phone within NZ & AUS and we have to send the phone back to Japan ourselves.

I checked the shipping cost was around $170NZD which I thought was really expensive so I asked Apple NZ if they are willing to reimburse that. Their response is "No, we are already doing you a favour for not charging for the repair and also the shipping back from Japan." A bit of paraphrasing here.

We got caught out because the 1 year warranty ran out by about 3 months. They have mucked us around for 1 month now which is ridiculous.

It just frustrates me that I have always had high regards about apple build quality and also their customer service. I believe the iphone should fail within 1 year and 3 months unless it is due to human error. Also considering the phone got really high temperature.

Any suggestions on how I can get a better support from Apple. I feel I am not going anywhere with the current Apple Support. I still can't believe Apple would treat their customers like this.