If you’d like to know how much does it cost to hire a PI to find someone, you’ve come to the right place. We’ll go over the different ways a private investigator will go about finding someone and the costs you can expect if you hire a reputable one to do it.
Many private investigators specialize in the locating and finding people and indeed for some private investigators that’s all they do. They have the luxury of sitting in front of their computer every day and conducting searches to find someone.
The cost to hire a PI to find someone depends on a number of factors. The main factor will be how much information you can provide the PI to find someone. Usually, you will need some combination of the following:
Name
Date of Birth
Social Security Number
Old address
Cellphone number
The more of these items you have the less expensive your locate will be. If you can provide the PI with two or more of these items, they will be better able to narrow down who they’re looking for and so it will take them less time to do the locate. This will translate into less expense for you.
When you hire a PI to find someone, they will use a variety of methods to conduct the search. Here are some of the main methods they use:
Database Searches
Phone database searches
Credit reports and headers
Post office searches
Utility company searches
Property Deed Searches
DMV Searches
While there are many methods used by the PI to find someone, the above are the main systems a private investigator will access to determine the location of someone. When you hire a PI to find someone, they will usually have a flat fee to conduct that locate. This fees can range from $75 to $350, or more. The more time a private investigator has to spend on your case, the more expensive it’s going to be.
The costs to find someone can be increased by the following factors:
Is the person a deadbeat? – deadbeats usually have collection agencies chasing them and they’re more likely to hide from any PI hired to find them.
Is the person a criminal? – criminals go to extra steps to hide.
Is the person homeless? – homeless people travel from place to place and are very difficult to pin down.
Are they just super-private? – some people want to remain, “off the grid” and go to great lengths to make themselves hard to find.
All of these things add up to more time it will take for a PI to find someone, and in some cases it means the private investigator will have to leave their office and go track down people in person. They will talk to neighbors, co-workers and even the local fire department in their attempts to find someone.
When you hire a PI to find someone you should find out from them how sure they will be that the information they provide to you is correct. For example, consider the following:
Unconfirmed locate – this is when a PI simply plugs information into a database and returns a result to you. Any clown can do this and you could even do this yourself using the many available online sources and databases.
Confirmed locate – this is when extra steps are taken when you hire a PI to find someone. The PI will confirm the location using tax records, or by calling up a landlord and confirming someone is a renter. They may go so far as to examine trash from a residence to see if someone has thrown away mail with their name on it.
A confirmed locate is a much more reliable locate and will probably cost you a little bit more as the private investigator will have to put in more effort to locate someone.
If you are looking for affordable licensed private investigators in Atlanta with 20 years of experience in locating someone and assisting individuals, attorneys and corporations feel free to contact us here. You can also view a portion of our extensive client list here, and see here what actual clients say about Eagle Investigative Services a private investigator in Atlanta, Georgia.
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