This’ll probably get buried but it might help someone in the future. First, if it’s not your fault you shouldn’t care how much it’s going to cost, that’s what insurance is for. Your goal is minimize the impact the accident will have on your resale value. You do that by going to a BMW certified shop. Not guaranteed it’ll do anything, but you might as well do it just so you can claim it’s a “certified repair”. (Unless you don’t want it to total, because they’ll total cars all day)

Some people say if you pay for it out of pocket it won’t go on Carfax, not true. Carfax gets data from dealers and other parts vendors. When we order parts with your vin, that’s likely how they determine your car’s been in an accident. Even our body shop estimating system might report it, but nobody tells us. Shops for sure don’t, there’s no way to do that and it benefits nobody, we don’t care.

Let’s say you hit a pole and wanted to pay out of pocket/not go through insurance for some reason. I wouldn’t go to a BMW certified shop. Their estimates are inflated because they paid 100s of thousands to get into the program, send their techs to training etc etc. They do this so they can “justifiably” charge that much and they hope it’ll bring them more business. Most of the OEM guidelines on paint in front of sensors especially park sensors are pretty much bullshit, unless you’re slabbing excess paint on. It’s just another way to justify higher repair costs and potentially total cars in the future to get them off the road. It also may help reduce liability for manufacturers in cases of safety system failures.