ipod touch 2g won't charge at all

I left my ipod in my room and went to charge it and all of a sudden out of nowhere it wont charge.

I used 2 different usb cable cords to plug into my PC and then to both to my Apple wall charger.
it's almost as if the ipod has no idea it's being plugged into something. there's no response from the ipod.

when i plug it into the computer, itunes doesn't open up.

i also tried the whole turning off,turning back on thing, and waiting a while for it. nothing 😟

can i declare this as a problem with the ipod charging area? is there a way to go around this with restoring the ipod? (I don't want to have to restore if it still won't work)

Anyone else have this problem? and were you able to solve this?
i saw on the apple site the repair cost for damaged hardware is $149 which is a bit much...

any help would be much appreciated!