Hi Malcolm,
Last year my wife had a minor shunt in our car and within 5 minutes of reporting it to the insurance company we had some pleb from miles away saying he was going to come and collect our car and leave us a courtesy car. So we told him in no uncertain terms that he WOULDN'T be repairing our car as we wanted a local (well known to us and very reputable) repairer to do it. You don't have to accept the insurance company's repairers and we didn't want theirs, but when we got back to the insurance company they said "You won't get a courtesy car" to which I replied that I wasn't bothered about a courtesy car, what I was bothered about was getting my car repaired properly!
Again, it's a case of standing up for your rights instead of letting people walk all over you.
Regards,
Derek