I've also had some bad hardware other than this one. They're not doing a very good job of QC or keeping up with the latest Arduino IDE, especially in LCD backpacks. I found this reader is also sensitive to the level shifter values. I'm using the 74x125 taken from my GPS logger shield and duplicating some of the circuitry. I'll be switching to the Adafruit Micro-SD reader as it should be a simple wire-to-pin plug-in job. I'm using mine on a Mega 2560.
The problem goes back to the schematic designer. They left out the ground connection to the regulator and it's two filter caps. The board layout just followed the schematic so it's also bad. Apparently, nobody bothered to see if the thing worked. Using a 3V3 supply, it's fine, but using 5V0, it won't work. By adding a short jumper wire from pin 1 of the regulator to a scraped off ground area under the logo, the reader works OK.