TL;DR so this may be repetitive...but I just talked to a Verizon store employee at an actual Verizon store AND a Samsung expert (at Best Buy). Both said the same thing...it is not a "recall". If a customer wants to return the phone they can, they can then buy something else. If they keep the phone Samsung will be giving them $25 to spend on accessories. Both were adamant nothing has happened in the states and that the issues are because of the difference in charge between us and "not us". Also they claimed third party chargers were used.
It seems either there is some back pedaling going on somewhere or it's still just one big mass of confusion (or perhaps a bit of both).
You aren't getting good info.
It is a voluntary recall, those happen in business.
They have zero knowledge to where all the phones are located. Samsung isn't releasing that and I guarantee low level employees do not know where they were located. What we do know from Samsung is they were from around the world, they told us that.
Also Samsung was clear, 35 cases of exploding phones, 24 were faulty battery cells. So 11 weren't due to that, those may or may not have been a third party charger, Samsung didn't release that info.