I'd say it's much more likely for a user to make a mistake, than for Electrum to give the wrong seed phrase.
Maybe so but on the other hand, we can't really know for sure, can we? At least not until the matter receives a more in depth investigation and recovery attempt on his hard drive. Hopefully the service he uses doesn't cost too much and he can report back how they were able to successfully get his wallet off that tea stained platter. I wanna pull out the popcorn on this one!