I am not saying this is what happened, but a lot of computer places that repair computer and/or sell hardware will tend to tell you that the data is lost rather than try to recover it even when, as iceberg mentioned, it would only require removing it from the computer and hooking it up to an external cable or enclosure. The reason they do this is because the odds are against the data being recovered when a computer won't boot and most customers are unlikely to pay for the time spent trying to recover the data if the data ends up not being recovered. For example, if someone takes their car to the shop and they say they tried, but were unable to fix it, then handed the customer a $300 bill for their attempt, it likely wouldn't go over well with the customer.
No matter what, I highly recommend keeping the old (supposedly bad) drive. Recovery is not time limited, so even though you may not have someone who can attempt to recover the data now, you might find someone eventually.
