Sorry, I'm in the queue at the moment. What I meant was that - per my conversation with EVGA - having to RMA entails canceling your step-up. It can be transferred to the new serial number after you receive your replacement GPU as long as you're still within 90 days of your original purchase date. If you are past that 90 day purchase date, the step-up window is closed and it is unlikely you will be able to get back into the queue at all even if you had been waiting from day one prior to needing to RMA.
While the thought of waiting that long in the queue to get a step-up fulfilled was probably deemed unlikely prior to the last couple generations, I think it's almost a certainty now that people trying to step-up to 3000 series cards are going to be waiting longer than 90 days to do it unless there's a sudden and dramatic breakthrough in Ampere supply. It's barely budged in the last 5-6 weeks and as far as I know there are people on the forum here who applied for step-up the day the 3080 released and they're still in the queue. Maybe I'm wrong and it will be all sorted quickly, I'd be really happy with that outcome obviously, I'm just a little leery about using the GPU after the 90 day window has closed when people on this very forum are saying the VRMs and voltage regulation on it are questionable.
I'm probably overthinking things, but this build will be my last hurrah for a while with the state of the world right now and I want to future proof as much as I can for the next console generation at least, not hamstring myself right out of the gate. Hopefully I'm just being paranoid and an RMA will never be necessary in the first place.