HTC Hero :: Google Sync Deleted Contacts Created On The Phone

I've lived with this problem long enough and searched for solutions to no avail, I hope someone here can help.

1. I create a new contact on my phone and select my googlemail.com when asked "create contact under account"?
2. I save the newly added contact details
3. I then synchronise the phone
4. The newly created account gets deleted from the phone.

For clarification I'm not saving it to the SIM nor to the phone memory, just to my googlemail account.I've read elsewhere that there might be a problem since google added gmail.com accounts in the UK. I now have 2 google accounts (gmail and googlemail) but in practice both seem identical, if I try to sign in to my googlemail account I end up in my gmail account so I doubt if this is the issue. I've tried deleting my googlemail account from my phone with the intention of replacing it with my new gmail account but I get the message that other applications rely on this account and that the only way to remove the account is to do a factory reset. If I create contacts in my gmail account off-line and synchronise my phone then these contacts appear on my phone as expected. It seems strange that this application should delete a newly added contact on the phone but that is exactly what happens. I know I'm not the only one whose experienced this but I've never seen a conclusive resolution, anyone here know how to solve this?