Fees of Our Hamburg Detective Agency

The Aaden Detectives Hamburg are qualified specialist investigators with many years of experience in corporate and private investigations. Most of our personnel have previous careers in police forces, criminal investigation departments, or intelligence agencies and therefore possess exceptional expertise. We bring these qualities to the service of our clients with maximum dedication and strive to offer you a fair fee model.

 

Below you will find an overview of the costs of our basic services. Our detective agency does not charge any hidden additional fees. Information on fees for flat-rate investigations (for example, vehicle owner identification, address research, and others) is available upon request, as these flat rates are always based on the individually calculated cost effort.

Detailed Fees

• Base Fee for Assignment:                            96,00 €
• Hourly Rate per Deployed Investigator:       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 Hamburg base or, for more distant assignments, according to individual agreement at favourable 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 Corporate Investigations GmbH, no additional fees are charged. Our fees therefore 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 investigation equipment (excluding surveillance vans, video surveillance systems, and GPS trackers)
• Postal costs (excluding express deliveries and international shipments)

 

No additional charges typical elsewhere are applied for the following:

 

• Flat-rate expenses

• Meal costs

• Night-time operations

• Weekend operations

• Public holiday operations (excluding Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day)

Free and Non-Binding Initial Consultation

As the saying goes, “Asking costs nothing” – and at Aaden Corporate Investigations, this is a lived reality. Our specialist detectives are happy to advise you free of charge and without obligation on any legitimate concern – by phone (+49 40 4223 6960), by email (info@aaden-detektive-hamburg.de), and/or in person at our office, at your home or business, 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 engaging a detective agency – the costs incurred are reimbursable. This means, for example, that an employer harmed by payroll fraud can claim back the detective costs incurred in obtaining court-admissible proof of the fraud from the employee responsible. The same applies to a mother who hires detectives to prove that the father has neglected his duty of care in the supervision of their shared child.

 

As a rule of thumb, the costs are borne by the party responsible. In practice, courts generally uphold this legal principle with few exceptions. Our clients must therefore initially settle the invoices issued by us, but the amounts are often recovered from the responsible party afterwards.

 

Various court rulings declare detective costs as recoverable out-of-court party expenses, provided they were necessary for legal enforcement or defence in accordance with § 91 para. 1 of the German Code of Civil Procedure (ZPO), including, among others, case no. 14 NW 671/90 of the Higher Regional Court (OLG) Koblenz, case no. 8 WF 96/88 of OLG Stuttgart (maintenance dispute), case no. 13 T 97/99 of the Regional Court (LG) Cologne (rental dispute), case no. W 1234/76 of OLG Munich, and many others.

Particularly relevant for companies:

“If the client of a detective agency is a business operator or freelancer, the invoice of a detective agency is generally deductible as a business expense.” (Hessian Finance Court, case no. 8 K 3370/88, EFG. 89, p. 576)