Fees of Our Frankfurt Detective Agency

The Aaden Detectives Frankfurt am Main are qualified specialist investigators with many years of experience in the fields of commercial and private investigations. Most of our operatives have backgrounds in law enforcement, the criminal investigation department or intelligence services and therefore possess exceptional expertise. We dedicate these qualities with maximum motivation to the service of our clients and strive to offer you a fair fee model.

 

Below you will find an overview of the costs for our basic services. Our detective agency fundamentally refrains from hidden additional fees. Information on flat-rate investigations (for example, vehicle owner identification, address research and other services) is available upon request, as these flat rates are always determined by the individually calculated effort required.

The Fees in Detail

• Assignment Base Fee                                    96,00 €

• Hourly Rate per Investigator Deployed          94,00 €

• Mileage Rate per Kilometer Driven                  1,50 €

All prices are gross (including statutory VAT) for private clients and net for VAT-liable clients.

 

Mileage is calculated either from our base in Frankfurt am Main or, for more distant areas of operation, by individual agreement at favorable conditions, which we can offer because we have a network of qualified local specialist investigators.

 

The hourly fee is billed in fair 15-minute increments.

Included Services

At Aaden Commercial Detective Agency GmbH there are no additional charges, so our fees include, among other things:

 

• Costs for the initial consultation and assignment discussion

• Costs for providing video and photographic material

• Telephone costs (excluding international calls)

• Costs for providing the necessary standard investigative equipment (excluding surveillance vans, video monitoring systems and GPS trackers)

• Postage costs (excluding express deliveries and international shipments)

 

No additional charges are applied for the following factors that are common elsewhere:

 

• Flat-rate expenses
• Meal costs
• Night-time assignments
• Weekend assignments
• Holiday assignments (excluding Christmas, New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day)

Free and Non-Binding Initial Consultation

It is said that asking questions costs nothing – and at Aaden Commercial Detective Agency GmbH, this proverb is lived in practice. Our specialist detectives are happy to advise you on any legitimate concern free of charge and without obligation – by telephone (+49 69 1201 8454-0), by email (info@aaden-detektive-frankfurt.de) and/or in person at our office, at your home or company, or at a neutral location.

Reimbursability of Detective Costs

If detective assignments serve to clarify a legally relevant matter and this matter could not be resolved by milder means – which is generally assumed when commissioning a detective agency – the costs incurred are reimbursable. This means, for example, that an employer affected by wage fraud can claim from the responsible employee the detective costs incurred for court-admissible clarification of the fraud case. The same applies to a mother who commissions detectives to prove that the father has neglected his duty of care in looking after the shared child.

 

As a rule of thumb: the perpetrator bears the costs. In legal practice, this legal principle is generally upheld with few exceptions. Accordingly, our clients must initially settle the invoices issued by us themselves, but they often recover the amount from the cost-causing party afterwards.

 

Among the various rulings that declare detective costs as out-of-court party expenses to be reimbursable, provided they were necessary for pursuing or defending legal rights according to § 91 para. 1 of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), are, among others: Case No. 14 NW 671/90 of the Higher Regional Court of Koblenz, Case No. 8 WF 96/88 of the Higher Regional Court of Stuttgart (maintenance dispute), Case No. 13 T 97/99 of the Regional Court of Cologne (rental dispute), Case No. W 1234/76 of the Higher Regional Court of Munich and many more.

Particularly Relevant for Companies:

"If the client of a detective agency is a business or freelancer, the invoice of a detective agency is generally deductible as a business expense." (Fiscal Court of Hesse, Case No. 8 K 3370/88, EFG. 89, p. 576)