It’s possible it’s bad, but they test them before they ship… it’s very rare.
Check out this video and see if it helps… The orientation is very critical…
And just to confirm:
- you have NFC in the phone settings turned on
- The screen is on and you are running an app like NXP Tag Info while trying to scan the chip
- you are holding the phone in each position for a second or 3 to give it time to scan
Purchasing an xLED would go a long way to figure out how to scan your chip with your phone.