Happening already
I bought an Acer netbook from the UK and had it shipped to Australia in June last year. I contacted both the vendor and Acer Australia when the hdd died recently, and Acer agreed to repair it - even paying for shipping. They claimed to be unable to reinstall the original linux os install; I should get the machine back next week.
So, it seems that the new policy may already have been unofficially implemented already - I had been fearing that I might need to pay for return shipping to the UK.