iPhone 4 earpiece broken?

[Vin365]

Launch out of warranty iPhone 4 here, placed a call fine today then when I tried again an hour later I was unable to hear anything out of the earpiece.. Before this it was plugged into my car-iPod cassette player (it has 2 black rings .. I read this online but still no luck;

The native iPhone earbuds jack has three white band that separates the jack into four separate metal pieces. Somehow, my Etymotic jack messed up the iPhone settings and caused it to get stuck in the headphone mode. The only way to get it back was to re-insert the Etymotic jack. That has reset the iPhone and everything is working fine again. So, if you are using any brand of earbud other than the native iPhone buds, that may be causing the problem. Hope that helps. Works like a charm for me.

)

I then tried a restore, nothing. Cleaned the earbud jack, nothing. So I gave up and called Apple and they told me I would have to pay $149 for a replacement which I refuse to do since I have kept my phone in perfect condition since launch. Any tips/help?