No fault claim - which option to take

eur0

Hi, my son's car has just been damaged in a car park. The other driver basically tried to park next to him and scraped down the rear quarter of his car so there is paint damage and a smallish dent. He has the other person's insurance details and also an independent witness in his favour (luckily). So he's insured with Admiral and is being asked (online) how he wishes to claim. One option is via Auxillis and I assume the other is direct with Admiral. Am I right in thinking he could also approach the other driver's insurer directly? Sorry it's been decades since I made a car insurance claim and the landscape seems to have changed considerably. The car is perfectly driveable and he would not be needing a hire car. Can someone advise on the best way to proceed given these circumstances? His excess is around £500 and he's a young driver with 4 yrs no-claims. Thanks.

Sandtree

Assuming there is no risk of it being a total loss then you are better speaking to the third party insurers to see if they are willing to deal.

Cash-Strapped.T32

Auxillis are a claims management company, and since this is a pretty slam-dunk no-fault for your son, they'll want to give it the hard-sell to take over the case.
Your son's insurer will also want to steer him towards the CMC. (indeed, so interlinked are they that I believe you said they even provide it as an option on the web-form)

The basic m.o. for the CMC will be to get your son into a hire-car for as long as possible, which will be a short-term rental, and then they'll charge the rental plus their own costs to the other person's insurer.
As you can likely guess, short-term rental is much more expensive than other forms of hire and thus it makes the whole accident far more expensive than it needed to be, but you can sell it to your customer that you're providing them with like-for-like cover, and let's not worry too much if the repairs take forever because it's the other party's insurer who is footing the bill, and you get to provide your customer with a nicer hire-car than the workshop who's fixing his car likely would.

The CMC take their cut, Admiral will take a cut, and that's pretty much the landscape in a nutshell...

CMCs may have their place in some circumstances, but imho their main function seems to be to extract additional revenue out of these sorts of accidents and I have no doubt they'll be salivating at the prospect of a sure-fire win case like this one.
Sorry if I sound a little cynical about the whole process! :P 

The other option is to go though the other person's insurer.
In a no-fault case like this, their incentive is to keep costs to a minimum, as it's them who's footing 100% of the bill.
So they'll want to see the car repaired as quickly as possible to keep hire-car costs down, and while it'll depend on the firm, they'll be more likely to let your son choose or at least be involved with the choice of repairer, as they want to keep your son sweet and dealing with them, and not to go to the CMC.

If you're sure you don't even need a courtesy car then personally I can't see the benefit of going with the CMC, but then again if the other person's insurer are for any reason uncooperative it's good to have them as a nuclear option.