My 3 Pis have destroyed 6 SD cards. One of them also somehow drew too much power when trying to boot and got so hot it burnt me and melted itself but that could have been the power supply. I know the 4s and 5s can blow SD cards if you run them without heatsinks.

What I'm saying is, your anecdotal evidence of two pis doesn't justify saying we did something wrong with the configuration. In my experience raspberry pis still behave like "throwaway devices" but their price tags do not justify it anymore.