Getting messed Around Over Car Insurance Claim

Hi,

My wife has recently been in a car accident. It was not her fault (she was parked) and the other drive has admitted liability.

Damage to our car looks cosmetic and fairly minimal. The other driver initially offered to deal with repairs privately but I thought it best to go through the insurance in case we got messed about (plus I have been in a situation before where, despite seemingly minimal damage, it was deemed there was damage to the chassis and the car was a write off).

So, as instructed, the car was taken to an 'approved' garage where, after a fifteen minute assessment they have decided that the damage is close to the value of the car (approx £2.5k) and will therefore likely be a write-off. Post this assessment the insurance company have also contacted is to say that there 'may be damage to the suspension' therefore we are no longer covered by insurance and the car cannot be driven.

So basically now we are screwed. The cost of repairs seems ridiculously over-inflated and we can't drive the car anywhere to get a second opinion because it is not insured! The insurance company are supposed to be providing us with a courtesy car but so far nothing has materialised. We could really do without the hassle of having to buy a new car (just put a new set of tyres on this one), not to mention the environmental cost.

To add to this we have just been contacted by the other party's insurers asking if we want to deal directly with them to get things sorted out, offering cheaper repair costs, courtesy car etc etc. I have no idea if this is legit but I didn't think this was the way things normally operated - one of the reasons I went through the insurance company in the first place is that I thought it would simplify things with a single point of contact!

So - I wondered if anyone had any advice as to how to proceed here? I remember someone telling me about a company they used once that basically kicked insurance companies !!!!!! to make sure you got everything that was due to you in such situations but I can't for the life of me remember what they were called and the Internet is peppered with scams around this kind of thing.

We're insured via Admiral, the other party is Hastings.