Hear, hear! I once had my account,for tech support calls, flagged with "when this guy calls, refer it _directly_ to **level IV** support". (This was a workstation vendor -- level IV was the 'guys in the back room, with actual access to the O/S source-code'.) The Level II and III folks found it awfully frustrating when they couldn't understand the question well enough to figure out _where_ to start looking for an answer. I was _the_ support point-of-contact for our company, and these were the *only* kinds of calls they got from us. Like with Scott, if it was anything simpler than 'really esoteric', *I* answered it in-house without having to call vendor support. I got that kind of access, because it was frequently worth it _to_them_ when I called. We didn't have an O/S source license, so the guy looking at their code _couldn't_ tell me much about what the was looking at, but it tended not to matter. one typical conversation:
me: I think I've found a bug in the {mumble} library routine, under _these_ circumstances. Would you grab the source code, and tell me if this is right? ts: ok. [pause] got it. me: right. we enter the routine with things set like this, and first it does _this_. ts: uh-huh. me: and then it does *this*. ts: uh-huh. me: and then it does =this*. ts: uh-huh. me: and then it does ... ts: (interrupting) oh, *shit*!!!! me: that's what I was afraid it was doing.
and, maybe an hour later, I have a patch for the problem in hand.