Third Party Repair vs Apple Store Visit (weird situation/question)

I have a 24" intel iMac that recently went kaput. I turned it on last night and it could no longer find any startup volume. It was as if my hard drive just vanished. I tried rebooting, I tried holding the option key and booting, I tried holding c and booting, etc. to no avail. There was just no longer a hard drive. I booted from the install cd and ran disk utility, but there was no volume to repair or reformat/reinstall on, so I finally called Apple. We went through the whole troubleshooting procedure and the rep came to the conclusion that I would have to bring my iMac to the nearest Apple Store or dealer to have the hard drive replaced...
Now, here's where my situation gets a little unique and where my actual question comes in. I live close by to an Apple Store, but I am currently receiving high-dose chemotherapy and it is HIGHLY inadvisable for me to drive, let alone expose myself to mall germs for the next few weeks. I told the Apple rep about my situation and asked about having someone come to my house to repair the computer. He obliged by hooking me up with an approved third-party dealer. They will apparently call me to set up an appointment, come to my home and replace my hard drive. Now, this is great, but I had a question about this which the Apple rep could not answer and I have yet to receive a call from the third-party repair company. My question for the rep was whether or not this third-party repair company would do anything at all to attempt to retrieve the data on the defective drive. The Apple Rep said he did not know what, if anything, they would do to help me retrieve the data currently in limbo. That pretty much stinks because all of my personal info is on there, including tax returns, e-mails, photos and music. I have some backups, but definitely not everything. This is long, sorry....wow...anyway, here is my question for this board:
Would I be better off waiting and just going through the Apple Store for this process? I have AppleCare and my PowerBook, so time is not really an issue; but would they go above and beyond in the effort to retrieve my data? I have no idea what this third party is going to do, but I'll find out eventually; however, if I'm armed with the knowledge that the Apple Store will do everything they can to get my data and this third party ends up sounding wishy washy about it (or worse - they flat out say they won't do anything beyond the repair), I'll just tell them to forget it and wait until I can travel and take my iMac into the Apple Store. This information is vital because the one thing the Apple rep made crystal clear is that there is no way I will be allowed to keep the old drive, which would allow me to attempt data retrieval at my leisure.
Also, this is an additional minor question: the Apple Rep said that the old drives are destroyed when received by Apple, but can anyone here confirm this? Is it 100% assured that these drives are not just given a cursory wipe and then refurbished (if it turns out they can be fixed that is)?
Thanks for listening and any info you can provide.
Matt
iMac 24"   Mac OS X (10.4.7)  

"but would they go above and beyond in the effort to retrieve my data?"
It has been my understanding from reports here by other users with the experience, that the Apple stores generally charge a fee (I think $75) for transferring hard drive data - it's not part of the service that they're performing. Don't assume that before you leave without your Mac, anyone will even inquire whether or not you still have data on a drive. There have been reports from some users who simply made the assumption that data transfer would be taken care of, only to find it all gone. As for an Apple authorized dealer, I'm not sure why the situation would be any different at all. Best to use caution.
Message was edited by: myhighway

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