[rant on]

Why is it that every time I chat with technical support the very first thing they ask is "Can I log in and take a look?"

I recently received a very specific error message, and when I asked the meaning of said message, this was their default response. When I said no, they couldn't log in, I was told they couldn't help me. Really?!?!

If I get a system generated error message, I would expect tech support to be able to explain the error message to me and give me a few steps to take to prevent the error message from recurring, without going digging around my production system.

[rant off]