An ERJ-170 flight crew encountered resistance from maintenance when they reported a damaged outboard slat seal during preflight.

Narrative

During the preflight a few mechanical discrepancies were found and we contacted maintenance. One of the items in question was the outboard slat seal on the right wing. It was cracked with 'bunched' holes in it. The mechanics that came out were very upset. One said 'this is getting ridiculous; this is the 4th one in two days. You guys must not want to go to ZZZ.' He said they didn't have any parts and it would ground the plane. He then went on a rant about how this (pilots' write-ups) is looking suspicious. He then went out to look at it and to discuss it with the other mechanic. He then called Maintenance Control on his cell phone and continued ranting. He told them this one was 'legit.' While this was going on; we looked in the MEL; CDL; and CDI to see if it could be resolved. Because he had implied we were maliciously creating write ups; we took a cell phone picture just for our records. My First Officer has never dealt with this kind of operation before but it's been going on for a while so I was well aware of their attitudes. The mechanics told us they were out of parts and there wasn't an MEL for this discrepancy. At this point we started to feel pressure to do a flight with a known discrepancy and no MEL record of the problem. Minutes later they came back with the logbook and said we were good to go. I said how is this legal with no MEL or CDL. They said it was resolved with an RT procedure and doesn't have to be fixed for 600 flight hours. I then called Maintenance Control to get some clarification because this procedure does not coincide with any of our manuals. They said it was part of the Maintenance manual. At this point it was on a recorded line and I had no way of proving if they were right or wrong since none of these manuals are readily accessible to flight crews. I felt as if I had no grounds to stand on.