>My problem (and I think that it relates to your experience) is that to often, so-called "support professionals" are anything but. I prefer that my users contact me directly when problems arise. I'll give you two examples why:

I agree with you on that, though there are one or two other issues involved which cast doubt on others professionality, but a lot comes down to accepting responsibility & being prepared to do something about it.

But your example brought to mind one of my own, from 15 years ago. A client contacted the support dept. complaining that an application wouldn't print anymore, after trying one or two ideas, the support dept. passed the problem on to me - my first reply was can I talk to him, I was told no it's the support dept.s job & development people don't have contact for support issues. The next comment was to make sure the printer is connected to the computer, I was told that we can't ask the customer that he'll think that we think he's stupid & we can't have that. Anyway to cut a long story short, the problem was resolved when the client himself found that the printer had become disconnected. He also made an official complaint about the support dept. not asking basic questions which would have saved a lot of lost production time & reduced long international phone calls.