Hi, and Happy New Year! This probably has nothing to do with the FaireBot shield, but to confirm that you should remove the FaireBot from your Arduino and see if it programs when you do that. Said differently, have you ever upload any sketches to your Arduino?
The more likely problem is you have either:
- Not selected the appropriate board from the Arduino Tools -> Boards menu
- Not selected the appropriate serial port from the Arduino Tools -> Serial Ports menu
- Not properly installed the USB drivers for your Arduino (so it doesn't show up under the Serial Ports menu)
Under the Tools -> Serial Ports menu, there should be one item that disappears when you unplug the Arduino's USB from your computer, and reappears when you plug it back in. You may have to mouse away and mouse back to the menu to inspire updates to the menu. If that's not the case, then either your Arduino itself is broken or the USB drivers are not installed.
If you're in Windows, Device Manager could give you a clue if it's a driver problem under the COM & LPT ports tree. I'm not familiar with how to get more insight on other operating systems unfortunately, but hopefully something here helps.