With the battery cover off, and the phone laid the same as yours, i've got two small holes pretty much the same size, next to each other.
I'm assuming, from where the pink is on your phone, it's the lower of the two holes, which on mine still looks white.
(the top hole looks like it just looks down onto the casing of the USB connector).

I'd stick to your guns, surely you can tell if water has actually been in the phone. There'd be more tell-tales than just that piece of paprt surely.

That's the one, thanks. Make sure it stays that way!!

I know that water hasn't been in the phone and they have told me that they normally expect to see both stickers turning pink (there's another one on the other side apparently that is conveniently out of shot in the image they have sent me) as well as evidence of corrosion on the circuitry which they also admit is not present. I am just stunned by their intransigence on this...

Wowser! It's common to have these strips near the sim holder. I regularly either cover them over or remove them carefully and keep safe as they are easily pink'd :-(

The keypad issue ( haven't got a niki so can't check) is usually caused by corrosion on the round metal push-contact so I can see their point, but it's easily fixed by cleaning the disc contact with IPA and doesn't warrant a keypad replacement. Affected a lot of typhoons IIRC. And if there had been enough water to turn the strip pink i'd have thought you'd have more serious issues that just a keypad fault - plus major corrosion around the board.

HTC did something similar with me when they 'lost' my mda compact III for a few months, then 'fixed' several faults that didn't need doing ( new LCD ) and claimed it was a gesture of goodwill as illegal software (the official t-mob wm6 upgrade!) had been loaded and my remaining warranty was now void! I'd paid for a new casing to be fitted and had to argue like stink to get them to send me a battery cover. Hey-ho. Seems since they opened their shiny new call centre service has gone downhill.
T-mobile have taken the repair contract for MDA branded devices away from HTC btw. So you can't book a t-mob device in anymore on htc's site. Nothing to do with me, honest...

M.S

Interesting stuff Mysterious...thanks. As a matter of interest they have just come back with the keyboard quote - £46 - a lot more attractive than the £278 that they came up with this morning.

Is it that you have to press *really* hard to get the button to work? Or has it failed completley?
If you do get them to fit a keyboard and pay for it, insist on receiving the old one back and peel the membrane off it. Then look at the contact discs. They should be shiny silvery-gold, corroded ones look greyd and cloudy. Fixed in 5 minutes but no-one 'fixes' anything these days they just swop parts. of course it could be something else entirely that's wrong with it but HTC have form here dating back to the original orange spv's... Hey-ho.

M.S

p.s Maybe you could contact the press office...

edit - links to my previous service experiences:

good: http://www.modaco.com/content/htc-prophet-...repair-via-htc/

bad: http://www.modaco.com/content/smartphone-g...-repair-issues/

failed completely, doesn't matter how hard you press it. In fact the failure of the 5 was preceded by it being permanently depressed (bit like me at the moment in fact) and 5s just running across the screen permanently. Thanks for the tip re keyboard - I will do that. Reluctant to go down press office route as it tends to result in a skewed experience. Would rather be a real customer and provide real opinion. Not a lot of journalists do that these days!

So there's no tactile 'push' when you push the 5 button? it just needs a new disc then - the underlying circuit will be fine - even if there is corrosion there are no componants there - only tracks that need cleaning. Easy peasy lemon squeezy...

Maybe it could be the soruce of an article on today's disposable society or summat? I could fix that for the cost of a pint...

M.S