CoolPix 8700 Problem

[Nnnnsic]

While I won't deny that my boss isn't all there (that's an understatement) in the field of tech and photography, she came to me a few minutes ago with an odd problem I've never even heard of and I'm wondering if anyone else has heard of anything similar to it.

The Compact Flash slot on her CoolPix 8700 (the camera I told her not to buy) keeps on destroying her memory cards.
It seemed a bit weird so I tested one of the supposedly borked cards in my D70... the D70 wouldn't recognise it and wouldn't even turn off... I had to pull the battery to turn it off... odd condition.

So I then checked that card in my card reader and, while it had images, none were viewable and the entire disk was giving me an error of it being corrupt.

It seems that everytime she puts a different card in the CF slot as of late, it too gets borked.

Now, I'll probably be the first to blame camera faults on her because of her lack of ability with cameras or anything technical, but this one has me confused.

Anyone else heard of a fault like that, because neither Nikon USA or Maxwell have a listing of it in their FAQs (gee, what a shock, eh)?

[stubbsy]

Leigh

Could there be something shorting out the pins in the camera or a bent pin perhaps.

[gstark]

Bent pins would be a good start. Look inside the card slot with a small torch.

Is she turning off the camera while the cards are still being formatted?

Is she turning off the camera before removing the cards?

Is she putting the cards in the camera with the correct orientation, or perhaps forcing them - perhaps just once - in incorrectly oriented?

[Nnnnsic]

Who knows...

But to add salt to the wound, she never sent off her warranty card.

So she's headed off to Ted's with her 3-4 month old camera thinking she'll get a replacement for nothing.

[Onyx]

Is the CF slot on the 8700 able to accept a CF card forced in reversed? I think you know where I'm going with this...

[Nnnnsic]

Beats me. She's already put it into Maxwell's luxurious "You'll be dead by the time we're done fixing it" program.

[Killakoala]

I'd agree with the bent pin scenario, however it is hard to bend pins as the slot is well engineered to prevent this from happening (also near impossible to insert the card in back-to-front without a hammer or Hulk like strength) so my guess would be the I/O CCT has been damaged by removing or inserting the card while the camera is turned on.

Although this would be unlikely but still possible as i am sure Nikon would have engineered some protection for this kind of thing considering the market for these things.

It would be very difficult to do either of the above, even for someone who has no idea what they are doing.

Maybe the problem is much more menacing, but i can't keep from thinking about Occam's Razor.