The dealer model may be nice and all, where it works. The European market is so fragmented (many small countries, language barriers etc) so what you often get is a one-man company 1000 km away whose main income is not from the products they represent. Service can be crap, it really can. When I turned to my "local" dealer for support for my Leaf back it turned out that he had sort of stopped actively selling Leaf backs (he preferred Phase One) and had an out of date price list, also overpriced from favourable currency conversion and did not know how the repair process works. After complaining for a while I was allowed by Leaf to change dealer to someone else, got one on recommendation and they seem good apart from that they don't communicate that often. Like once every four weeks. Support goes rather slow that way.
By far, the best source of support for me has been this forum, but you don't do repairs here, unfortunately
When it's this dysfunctional I really think one should look into other models or complementary models to the traditional dealer. I think one should shut down those one-man dealerships and instead concentrate to fewer but larger ones, some which has a strong web presence and can sell and support remotely, and the manufacturer should have some process to ensure the quality of the dealers. Currently quality control seems to be non-existent (at least with my manufacturer), and still they strongly urge you to turn to your geographically nearest dealer, and if you live in the wrong place that'll be a punishment.