Clearly something was done wrong with the build of this product.
That is not at all clear to me at this point. The only thing that is clear to me is that you are angry because something no longer works.
What is frustrating is that you seem to want someone else to tell you what to buy that will last longer. I could tell you what I bought about a year ago - and it worked the first time and still works. I wrote about it
here. Before I bought it, I spent several hours of "due diligence" which largely consisted of going through all the info that
@modem7 has archived and made available - a link was already provided but there is more on those pages. Then, I found out that only a small portion of the *many* boards that have been made (and all the versions) and sold, were available to me in an "I want it right now" fashion. So, I took a shot. If it was a bust, I would have written that, it wasn't so I wrote about the positive experience...so far.
I would like to know what happened to your card, exactly and specifically..with pictures and traces and, eventually a fix. Anger, I can get anywhere; stories with a happy ending because someone figured out how to fix something and shared how they did it are less common.
You will likely just go get another one and I hope you have a better experience.
The thread got me thinking about the CF cards themselves and I came across this
advert/"press release" about, what looks like a premium card back in 2004, and, you can still get them
here - but some of them are 4X more than I paid for the board that I bought and 6 CF cards. I wonder if it is better than
this one. Thank goodness, I have enough experience to make a lot of back ups
PS
@twmiller beat me to it because I had to be so verbose.