At a guess here I would say that have done exactly what you have done and can not read the drive. So they can not recover any data.
What you need is a [b]Professional Service[/b] that can pull the HDD apart and replace what may be broken or remove the platters and read directly off those. As this requires a Class 1 Clean Room no store will have the necessary equipment because they do not specialise in this work or have the money to waste on occasional use. They will see the HDD with a value of X $ and look at replacement the drive as apposed to the cost of the Data on the HDD which is far more expensive to replace or recover.
Now if you broke the read write heads when you dropped the drive and continued to leave it running it is possible that the Platters have been totally destroyed but my best guess would have to say that the place that you took the drive to doesn't know what they are talking about and certainly doesn't have the Diagnostic Equipment to work with broken HDD's. Any reputable Data Recovery House would have charged you a Deposit to look at the drive which includes dismantling and giving a fairly accurate quote to recover your data with the deposit being included in any Recovery Work that is approved. So if you didn't pay somewhere around the $900.00 mark to get the Quote the drive was never dismantled and looked at in the first place.
At least I believe that is the way that these places work when asked to give a quote on Recovery as I have never asked this of any of them I have just given them the Drives and told them to recover the data. But if you want them to push it through it will cost more than allowing then to recover the data as they have available time. So if you want the data recovered in up to 72 Hours it will cost much more than if you tell them to put it through normally in which case they should take about a week depending on what they are set up to do at the individual places. You can get most places to recover within 24 Hours for a Premium Price and down to 72 Hours while pushed through with a Rush any longer that this is considered a Normal Work and comes at the cheapest price.
Col