NTL "free cable" fix

Hi,
My father was on the phone to NTL there coz our internet went down. It just wasn't working at all.

So anyway, he gets through to the girl on the other end and explains that its been down. She replies by saying that the helpdesk received an internal email from the network team, or the higher ups, or someone saying that if anyone calls saying their connection is down, to give them a free cable which is supposed to fix the problem.

I'm assuming its an ethernet cable, and not the coax cable thats coming in from the wall to the modem, so why are they giving replacement cables when the issue doesnt seem to be connected to this at all?

Or do they have some magical cables that fix everything? If they're replacing them with Cat6 cables, then i dont think it'd make any difference to having a cat5e cable either. I feel like its just a fob off tbh!