Affects: 5.3.27
The methods in ServletUriComponentsBuilder return UriComponentsBuilder objects that are already encoded. (This is inconvenient, but for backwards-compatibility probably unchangeable.) This behavior is not obvious, and the Javadocs should mention this to clients.
Comment From: bclozel
Closing as in the meantime we've updated the Javadoc and added a dedicated section in the reference docs about this.
Sorry it took us so long to get to your issue. Thanks!