Here's the other bit of it that most people don't understand on their first try.
Everything that plugs into an arduino is not a slave device.
In this case both this module and the hc-05 and hc-06 are standalone and actually HAVE THEIR OWN SOFTWARE on them. These chips are fully functional without arduino and you can send commands to them directly or by using the arduino as a dummy chip.
So at the end of the day to get your project working you should interface with the device directly instead of passing it through arduino.
Your device most likely isn't busted so don't worry about constantly flashing between versions. You probably just need to configure it using AT+ commands.
Here is a pdf of AT+ commands
Download pdf
This is a quickstart guide that includes pictures and order of commands. Don't fry your boards.
Download pdf
After that's done serialCommand amd software serial are pretty easy to use. Look at the serialCommand examples to see how it's done.
SoftwareSerial example using serialCommand