Why Fixed-Hour Surveillance Packages Don’t Work: A Case Against Cookie-Cutter Investigations
You need answers. Maybe it’s about a spouse you suspect is cheating. Perhaps you’re dealing with a custody situation where your ex isn’t following the court order. Or you’re facing an insurance claim that doesn’t add up, and you need proof.
You start calling private investigators and here’s what may hear: “We offer a 40-hour surveillance package over a two-week period for $2,500.” Clean. Simple. Straightforward.
It sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? You pay a set amount, they watch for a set time, and you get your answers. Except there’s a problem with this approach that most people don’t realize until it’s too late.
Your situation isn’t a commodity that can be solved in exactly 40 hours spread out over a two-week period.
Think about it. Does a cheating spouse schedule their affairs? Do custody violations happen on a convenient timeline?
Of course not. Yet you’re being asked to pay for an investigation method that treats your unique, complex situation like it’s identical to every other case that came before it.
Here’s what no one tells you when they’re selling you that neat, tidy package: real investigations don’t work on timers. The most crucial evidence often emerges at the most unexpected moments. The breakthrough you’re looking for might happen in the 3rd hour on day 1, or it might happen in the 43rd hour on day 35—but you would never know since your package would have run out.
You deserve an investigation that adapts to your situation, not one that forces your situation to fit into a predetermined box. You deserve investigators who can pivot when new information emerges, who can strike when opportunity presents itself, and who understand that your case is unique.
Because at the end of the day, you’re not paying for 40 hours of watching. You’re paying for answers. And getting those answers shouldn’t depend on whether the subject of investigation cooperates with an arbitrary schedule.
Packages Prioritize Hours Over Outcomes
Let’s be honest about what you’re really buying when you purchase a surveillance package.
You think you’re buying answers. The agency thinks they’re selling hours over a fixed period. This fundamental misalignment is where everything starts to go wrong.
Last month, we received a call from Maria, a tenant who had been wrongfully evicted from her apartment. Her landlord claimed they needed the unit for “family use”—specifically, that the landlords would be moving in immediately. Under our local housing laws, this was one of the few legal reasons for eviction, but Maria suspected it was a lie designed to get her out so they could re-rent at a higher price.
She had hired another investigation agency to gather evidence. They sold her a 20-hour surveillance package. When no evidence was found after those hours were exhausted, Maria called us for a second opinion. She forwarded the investigator’s notes, hoping we could understand what went wrong.
Reading those notes clearly demonstrated the investigator’s priority to fill those 20 hours.
Day 1: “Arrived at subject property at 11:00 AM. Maintained surveillance until 6:00 PM. No activity observed. No vehicles in driveway. House appears vacant.”
Day 2: “Arrived at subject property at 11:00 AM. Maintained surveillance until 6:00 PM. No activity observed. No vehicles in driveway. House appears vacant.”
Day 3: “Arrived at subject property at 6:00 AM. Maintained surveillance until 12:00 PM to utilize remaining package hours. No activity observed. No vehicles in driveway. House appears vacant. Package complete.”
That was it. 20 hours of watching an empty house mostly during the same time periods, at the same location, with no strategic thinking whatsoever. The investigator had delivered exactly what they promised: 20 hours of surveillance. The fact that those 20 hours were tactically useless? Not their problem. Package delivered.
Maria’s case perfectly illustrates the backwards logic of package-based surveillance. The investigator wasn’t trying to catch the landlords in a lie—they were trying to efficiently burn through 20 prepaid hours. They weren’t thinking strategically on day one about when the landlords would be most likely to leave if they lived there. They weren’t considering if the landlords might have another address where they do live.
They were thinking about completing a package.
If the goal had been gathering evidence instead of consuming hours, the approach would have been completely different. A competent investigator would have started surveillance at dawn—when people are most likely to be coming and going, when morning routines happen, when the truth about who actually lives where becomes obvious.
More importantly, they would have done preliminary research before deploying any surveillance at all. A simple property records search would have revealed that the landlords did in fact own another property.
But packages don’t reward this kind of thinking. They reward hour consumption.
Misaligned Incentives and Tactical Pressure
Surveillance packages create a psychological trap that works against everything an effective investigation should be.
Think about it from the investigator’s perspective for a moment. You’ve prepaid for 20 hours. Those hours are sitting there like money in the bank—money that has already been spent, regardless of whether those hours actually help your case. This creates some very strange incentives that can work directly against your interests.
First, there’s the “use it or lose it” pressure.
The investigator knows you’ve paid for 20 hours. They know you expect 20 hours of work. Even when intelligence suggests that surveillance isn’t productive right now—maybe your subject is out of town, maybe they’re sick, maybe they’re going through a period of particularly cautious behavior—there’s pressure to keep the meter running.
After all, you’ve already paid for it.
This leads to surveillance that’s tactical suicide. Instead of waiting for the right moment when the subject’s guard is down, investigators feel compelled to maintain presence because the package demands it. Instead of backing off when a subject becomes suspicious, they keep pushing because there are still hours to burn within a fixed period.
The opposite problem is just as destructive: the premature stop.
This happens when investigators approach the end of a package just as something interesting starts to develop. Maybe the subject’s behavior is shifting. Maybe all the signs point to something significant happening soon.
But the hours have been exhausted.
Now your investigator faces an uncomfortable choice: continue watching and go over budget or stop just when things are getting interesting.
Good surveillance often requires tactical adjustments. Sometimes you need to get closer to see what’s happening. Sometimes you need to back off to avoid detection. Sometimes you need to switch locations, change vehicles, or bring in additional investigators.
All of these decisions should be based on what’s best for gathering evidence.
But when you’re working within a fixed package, every decision gets filtered through a different question: “How will this affect the remaining hours?”
The Agency Convenience vs. Client Needs Problem
Why do surveillance packages exist in the first place?
Spoiler alert: it’s not because they’re the most effective way to solve your problems.
Packages exist because they make life incredibly easy for investigation agencies. They simplify sales conversations, streamline scheduling, reduce administrative overhead, and create predictable revenue streams. They turn the complex, messy, unpredictable work of investigation into neat, tidy, sellable products.
For the investigation agency, packages are a brilliant business strategy.
When a potential client calls, it’s much easier to say, “We offer 40-hour surveillance packages over a two-week period for $2,500” than it is to say, “Let me understand your unique situation, analyze the best investigative approach, develop a customized strategy, and provide you with a proposal that addresses your specific needs and goals.”
The first conversation takes five minutes and ends with a credit card transaction. The second conversation takes an hour, requires actual thinking, and might not result in an immediate sale.
Which conversation do you think most agencies prefer?
This is the “off-the-rack suit” problem in investigation services. Sure, you can walk into a department store and buy a suit that’s sized “Large” and hope it fits reasonably well. It’s fast, convenient, and requires no customization. But when you’re getting married, going to a job interview, or attending any event where how you look really matters, you don’t settle for “close enough.”
You get a suit tailored to your exact measurements.
Your investigation is a high-stakes situation where “close enough” isn’t good enough. Yet you’re being offered off-the-rack solutions to problems that demand custom tailoring.
The convenience isn’t just about sales conversations. Packages make everything easier for agencies from an operational standpoint. Scheduling becomes simple—just block out 40 hours across two weeks. Billing becomes automated—charge the standard package rate regardless of complexity. Resource allocation becomes predictable—assign one investigator for a predetermined period.
None of these operational conveniences serve your interests.
Your cheating spouse doesn’t operate on the agency’s convenient schedule. Your custody situation doesn’t conform to their billing preferences. Your insurance fraud case doesn’t care about their resource allocation strategies.
But packages force your unique, complex, urgent situation to fit into their standardized, simplified, convenient framework.
Here’s what this looks like in practice. You call an agency in crisis. Maybe you’ve just discovered evidence that your spouse is cheating. Maybe your ex has violated a custody order, and you need proof for court next week. Maybe you’ve been served with a fraudulent lawsuit and need evidence to defend yourself.
You’re looking for help solving a problem that’s turning your life upside down.
The agency representative listens to your story with apparent sympathy, then smoothly transitions into their package pitch. “Based on what you’ve told me, I’d recommend our standard 40-hour surveillance package. We will complete that over 14 days, and it includes a comprehensive report with photos and video documentation.”
Notice what just happened? Your unique situation—with all its urgency, complexity, and specific requirements—got reduced to a standard product offering. The agency didn’t develop a strategy for your case. They applied their existing product to your case.
This is backwards.
A Better Alternative
So, what does effective investigation look like when it’s freed from the artificial constraints of predetermined packages?
It looks like everything we’ve been talking about, but in reverse.
Instead of starting with time limits, it starts with understanding your situation. Instead of forcing your case into a standardized framework, it builds a custom strategy around your specific needs. Instead of measuring success by hours completed, it measures success by evidence gathered and problems solved.
Sometimes that might require extensive surveillance.
Sometimes it might require very little surveillance accompanied by other investigative work.
Sometimes it might require a completely different approach altogether.
Here’s the most frustrating part: agencies know this. Experienced investigators understand that effective investigation requires flexibility, customization, and the ability to adapt strategies based on emerging intelligence. They know that cookie-cutter approaches rarely deliver optimal results for complex situations.
But they also know that packages are easier to sell, simpler to deliver, and more profitable to scale.
So, they choose convenience over effectiveness. They choose their operational simplicity over your investigative success.
The Flexible Retainer Model
The most client-friendly approach is a flexible retainer that gives you control over how investigative resources get deployed. You put money on account—say, $1,000—and the investigator draws against it as work is performed. But here’s the crucial difference: the work is driven by intelligence and strategy.
Sometimes, this might mean intensive surveillance when conditions are right. Other times, it might mean other investigative methods to gather information that will be helpful for the overall goals.
The key is that every dollar gets spent strategically in service of your goals, not in service of completing a predetermined package.
This approach gives you several advantages that packages can’t match. You maintain control over investigative priorities as circumstances change. You can scale resources up when opportunities emerge and scale them down when patience is required. Most importantly, you’re paying for results-oriented thinking rather than time-oriented watching.
The best investigations are measured not by how much time they consumed, but by how effectively they served your specific needs. Sometimes that means getting crucial evidence quickly and efficiently. Sometimes it means having the patience and flexibility to wait for the right moment, even if it falls outside an arbitrary time frame.
For a complimentary, obligation-free consultation, please get in touch with us at 604-657-4499, info@shadowinvestigationsltd.ca, or fill out our contact form below with your preferred contact method and a brief overview of what you would like assistance with. We keep all information confidential and only use contact information to respond to inquiries.
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