If you’re going to be hiring a private investigator to work on your case, it’s definitely a good idea to know what he or she is going to charge before setting things in motion.

Factors that come into play include whether the investigator charges by the hour or simply a flat rate depending on the type of case. They may also ask for a retainer, so you’ll want to be sure you ask about this possibility as well.

If the type of service you require is rather straightforward and very rarely strays from what would be considered standard procedure, then the investigator will likely opt to charge you a flat fee for his or her services.

These types of basic services include things like background checks, vehicle registration searches, GPS monitoring and criminal record searches.

Basically, if the investigator can sit at his or her desk and do a little bit of work on your behalf, then a flat fee is probably what you can expect to see when you receive your final bill.

These will be different from private investigator to private investigator, so it’s hard to put an estimated price tag on this type of service.

But, it shouldn’t be too terribly expensive, unless something unexpected comes up that requires the case to receive a little extra attention.

Because of the many variables in play, the industry averages for the types of services mentioned above can vary greatly.

But some examples include $300 to $600 for locating a missing person, $100 to $700 for locating birth parents or children and $300 to $600 for cases that involve a pre-determined amount of in-depth research.

Now, let’s talk a bit about larger jobs and how much you might expect to pay for your investigator’s services. Think of these types of cases as anything that involves either much more extensive in-depth research or actually getting out into the field and doing surveillance or other types of information gathering.

Examples might include surveilling your spouse for an infidelity facw, locating someone who doesn’t want to be found or many other types of more in-depth cases.

These are cases where your investigator is going to want to charge you an hourly rate, as it’s hard to determine ahead of time how extensive the case is going to become.

Hourly rates vary across the country, but the industry average in the United States is between $50 and $75 per hour…
 
Continue reading the article and learn more about private investigators on Life Is An Episode website.