Have you tried it? The few times I did made no difference and it went no where.
And the cable company is absolutely doing it on purpose. And they know they can get away with it.

Comcast is the provider in our area. Each of the local branches has a crate of cable cards they keep. Every f^n one of them is defective in some way. They know it! The crate is strictly there to deter anyone from trying to activate their own box. After hours & hours of trying to get a system to work with their defective cards, most people give up and rent the cable company's box. Especially after weeks of trying and getting them to swap cards a few times (which they already know won't work either).

The last time I did a new TiVo CATV install, it took 2 months of fighting with Comcast before we finally got a working card. Never again.
FCC has been paid off to not care and there is nothing we can do about it. So I don't sell TiVo systems anymore. Not because they are not awesome but because it is near impossible to get a working system for my customers.