I used to spend hours working on my resume in LaTeX, under the belief that it would buy me geek cred from employers who could recognize the typesetting. Not one person ever noticed it and the hassle from recruiters that wanted a Word doc finally motivated me to switch to Word. Sad but that's the way it goes.
As a counterpoint, I've recently had two interviewers recognize (and comment) on me using TeX because they recognized Computer Modern. One commented that I should have typed '\latex' instead of just 'latex' (I agreed of course, but mentioned that I didn't want to be too flashy). I got offers from both.
I don't use recruiters, preferring to rely on personal connections, but would they really balk that much at a PDF resume?
I think that discovering which recruiters will hassle you for Word files is a feature, not a bug.
There is no good reason for them to require Word that doesn't, ultimately, come down to them either a) being too lazy to cut and paste into a database, or b) wanting to "improve" your CV before passing it on.
