PCCard pins shorting PCMCIA port?

Hi, I hope this a good place for a technical question. I am an administrator at a small business, and trying to figure out why we have several laptops with unusable PCCard ports. We own two Sprint air cards that are available to employees on request: a Sierra Wireless AC595 and a Pantech PC-500. The Sierra recently stopped working, but it's more a plug-and-play issue than a radio issue. It's not recognized by the laptops anymore, and appears as a PCMCIA MTD-0002 instead. In trying to solve the problem, I've noticed the laptops are not accepting the Pantech either, creating the same error. A WiFi router that doesn't take the Sierra's form factor still works fine with the Pantech, so I know it's good.

Just today I saw something I hadn't noticed before. In the lower-right corner of the Sierra (looking straight-on at the female edge), the plastic appears worn away between what I believe are pins 35 and 36, a ground and "card detect 1". Now I'm technically inclined, but am no engineer... Is it feasible that could have caused a short in the PCCard ports of any laptop that's recently tried the Sierra, thereby causing all other cards to fail? Is there any easy method for testing the PCCard port pinouts?

We are working through the issue with Dell, and there are still zillions of things to try, but I wanted to get some feedback on my current sinking feeling... Any thoughts? Thanks!