What causes a Square Reader to say it is damaged?

[Eagleskevin]

My Card Reader was working this morning; by afternoon, when trying to connect to my tablet, it tells me the reader is damaged and to replace it, but the only thing I am aware of that happened before this, was my power cord in my vehicle came out of the outlet while my reader was charging, I pushed the power cord back in.

[Candlestore]

@Eagleskevin ;

I am not sure what could have gone wrong, but it is a low power consumption item, and possibly either when it came or you plugged it back in, the car outlet could have sent a small 'shock' to the reader.  I have had this happen with other items in a car, and when plugging in the cigarette or power port I see a small spark.  Sometimes nothing happens other times the item being charged acts weird or ends up broken.  I would see if it still works.  I had a water pipe break and soaked my Card readers and out of 4 of them only 1 still acts up.  It works, but it is harder to connect to Bluetooth or USB now.  So for the most part I believe these are very well made and do not fail often.