So you’ve finally decided to do something about your problem and you’ve built up the courage to call a private investigator. You jump on google and there are lots of investigators advertising. You don’t know much about the industry and you’ve never done this before. How do you decide which one to use?
Well the first thing you should be checking is if the company is a licensed private investigator. This will quickly narrow down your search. All investigators must be licensed to operate in each state of Australia that they wish to operate. Just like you have to be licensed to drive a car. This means they are governed by a code of ethics and have operating procedures to abide by. Licensing for investigators was brought in to weed out the cowboys or rogue and dishonest people.
Unfortunately, there are still plenty of investigators around that are not licensed or are only licensed in other states. The risk you run by not using a licensed private investigator Sydney is it is harder to hold them liable for dishonest and misleading behaviour. If they are licensed they can be prosecuted or lose their license and be forced to stop trading.
Licensed private detectives should display their license on all advertising including their website and email signatures. If you can’t see a license number then there is a pretty good chance they are unlicensed.
A good way to check is by asking for their license number so you can check it with the local government authorities. In NSW, Private investigators are regulated by the Security Licensing & Enforcement Directorate (SLED) which is a department under the NSW Police. The license type a Private Investigator should hold is called a Commercial Agents and/or Private Inquiry Agents licence (CAPI). You can search their license number by going to the following link. Or simply google “check private investigator license NSW” to find the link.
https://apps.police.nsw.gov.au/spr/licenceCheck/Search.jsp
If you want to do a full check on the company ask them to send through a ‘’company extract”. This will allow you to view the official company name and the Directors names of the company. Also ask for any trading names under that company. Run a basic search on google on the Director Names, the company name and any trading names. Make sure there isn’t any negative reviews, articles or bad publicity. Investigators should have full transparency on who they are. If they are not willing to provide this information I would suggest they have something to hide.
Unfortunately, there are unlicensed investigators operating that take full advantage of people in vulnerable situations, pulling on those emotional heart strings, extracting large amounts of money up front, promising the world and never delivering. Or they don’t disclose all their costs upfront and you end up with a huge bill at the end. This is your hard-earned money and you want to know it is being spent wisely and used effectively.
As a further check it is wise to check public reviews on the company. Google Maps is a great place for this. A lot of companies will have plenty of good reviews however check the lower rating reviews to see what peoples bad experiences are as sometimes there can be fake reviews pushing the bad ones down.
Our company is fully licensed in NSW, QLD & VIC. Our licence is displayed on our home page. https://sydneypi.com/en/ We are completely transparent on who we are and are happy to provide any documentation on request to prove our legitimacy.