The intercom box, sent back from Illinois by FlightTech, finally arrived back in Irving on Wednesday. Because I have been as sick as a dog since last Sunday, I finally got around to opening it up on Thursday.
The most interesting revelation from the report that FlightTech wrote (written as a dummy invoice) was that the damage to the circuit board was on the underside of the board. We could not have been responsible for the damage, since we never needed to remove the board from the base of the box that contains it. The installation into the electrical area of the Long-EZ involves us simply plugging the 24-pin Molex connector into the top of the PC board, putting the top on the aluminum case, and fixing the case to the electrical components cover. The aluminum box and intercom unit spent its entire life until final plug-in sitting on a workbench away from the plane while Jesse rewired the existing intercom and radio circuits to take the new intercom, fitting the necessary Molex connectors to the wires (and hats off to him for doing this, because the pins in this Molex connector are incredibly small).
I talked to Aircraft Spruce on Thursday evening and explained the issue to them. They were surprised that FlightTech did not simply send me a replacement, but as I pointed out to them, FlightTech's verbal opinion to me on the phone was that this board had been returned from the field to Spruce, and had somehow found its way back out as an OK unit to me, when it was antything but OK.
Spruce sent me a return-paid USP package label, so the unit is going back to Spruce on Monday. We will then see what transpires.
Here is the photo of the damage to the board, annotated by FlightTech: