I want some new buttons. I don't need any new buttons, but I thought that since new buttons are only two or three quid, if I forsook a pint of Scruttock's Old Dirigible down at the Horse's Handbrake this evening, I could afford some.

The new buttons I want are to replace the old, sad looking ones on the key for my 2004 allroad.

The white paint has worn off the little padlocks and the little saloon car with the open boot, and the key fob looks a bit manky after seven years of use, even though I'm still on the original battery. That's what you pay extra for with an Audi. A key fob battery that lasts seven years.

Anyway, my head was turned by these buttons here, and I thought I'd get some. They are 30p off, too. Then I looked at some obscure thread on an Audi forum somewhere in the Andromeda galaxy, and someone mentioned that new buttons were actually a proper Audi part as well, and that they only cost about three quid.

Andy the parts bloke ordered some for me last week, and on Saturday I went to pick them up, barely able to contain my excitement.

We looked at them together.

I said I thought it might be a good idea to compare them with the ones which were on the key in the ignition in the car, which was outside with a rather resigned looking Mrs Phutters sitting in it.

You can imagine how disappointed I was when, having fairly sprinted out to get it, it turned out that the new ones were too small.

Crestfallen doesn't describe it. I must have looked like a kid who wanted a catapult for Christmas and unwrapped a box of chocolates with nuts in instead.

Martin (the other parts bloke) rang me yesterday to say that you can't get buttons for my key. He'd cross-checked my registration number and VIN and everything, too. He was very apologetic, but I said 'Never mind. Thanks for trying. It really isn't important.'

Then we said goodbye to each other, and hung up.

The thing is that I could order those buttons from eBay, but I'm not entirely sure that if I did, and they came, that they wouldn't be the too-small ones again. There's another seller in Hong Kong or somewhere who sells them too, and he's been thoughtful enough to put the dimensions of his buttons on his eBay page. Except that his buttons, while the correct dimension in one direction, are a millimetre and a half too small in the other.

Now this could be because he simply didn't take enough care in his measuring, or that his buttons are a third size. Two weeks on a junk from Kowloon is an awfully long time to wait for the wrong thing.

There is a point to all this, and here it is: has anyone with an allroad (or an A6 of a similar vintage) bought any replacement buttons from eBay - or anywhere else for that matter - and found them to be an inch-perfect fit?

If you have, could you tell me where you got them from?

It has to be said that this issue is assuming an importance which is totally out of proportion to the reality of the situation, in that the existing buttons continue to work faultlessly, and nobody else - and I mean nobody - has ever had occasion to comment on how grubby my buttons are and that I really ought to think about replacing them.

Thanks.

P.S. I did look at the Osir button replacement, but it's rather expensive, not to mention the fact that it too might conceivably be the wrong size if the experience of the past few days is anything to go by.

Hopefully yours, with dirty buttons

Pete