Sorry for the long time after my last post guys. I was a little bit busy with real life and got ill too.
In my case, i decided to buy a new reader because the repair costs for the damaged reader are to much. Even if i did not expect it, the screen is broken unfortunately.
Anyone who is living outside of US/Canada/UK and is facing a damage with his/her reader i can only recommend to speak with sonys online support. They are indeed helpful and friendly. If they are not able to help you, they will tell you to send your reader to their repair center in texas.
At that stage you will have to decide if you are willing to spend the high shipment costs. If you know someone with a valid US-address then you should ask him/her if he/her could help you to manage the re-shipment from the repair center to you. If you don't know somebody in US you can send your reader to the repair center anyway. But then they will send it back to you without insurance.
All in all i must they that the high (re-)shipment costs and additionally the fee you possibly have to pay to sony for looking inside your reader will be around the half of the price of a new reader. Add the costs of repair and you will possibly end up at the price of a new reader - as it was in my case.
Now i ordered a new sony reader from B&H and will pay around EUR300 with taxes and fees. It is a little bit more expensive than the all-in-all costs of repair but i will get a new device.
Maybe i will buy a second reader for my wife end of this year. I guess i will then buy a Cybook Gen3 at
http://www.justread.de (if they will offer the new price of EUR 280 until then). In that case i would deal with a german seller and the manufacturer of the device (bookeen) resides in europe too. I guess in case of a damage it would be much easier then.
On the other hand sony will offer the reader in germany in 2009 too...