Q. What is the value of being listed with ION?
A. It increases the possibility of potential clients seeking an investigator with your qualifications, in your area, finding you. It also increases the possibility of being contacted by an ION staff member with a referral from ION's non-Internet, staff operated Investigators Anywhere Resource Line. With several 800 number lines, the Resource Line helps thousands of clients who do not use the Internet find competent investigators when they need them in areas beyond where they usually have cases. Since 1990, iON has referred over 28,000 cases to local independent private investigators.
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Q. How does ION differ from other investigator referral services?
A. ION maintains an inhouse, proprietary database of over 35,000 private investigators all over the U.S. and over a hundred other countries. The majority of the most effective and professional private investigators in the U.S. are identified in this database as well as a large number of unprofessional, incompetent and dishonest people who call themselves private investigators. The investigators with low ratings are tracked by ION but are never referred to clients either online or by the staff. Selecting an investigator through ION is like having someone count the cards for you in a poker game. ION cannot guarantee you will win every time but your odds are better than they would be without ION.
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Q. What type of clients use ION?
A. Over the past eleven years, ION has been used by over 4,200 individuals from:
| Insurance Companies, TPA's & State Comp Funds |
52% |
| Other investigators, including those with regular nationwide clients |
30% |
| Attorneys & Law Firms |
09% |
| Corporate Security Departments and Occasional Business Users |
05% |
| Personal, Domestic, Matrimonial & Miscellaneous |
04% |
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Q.How is ION different than a listserve for getting help?
A.When you need to hire an investigtor to help you in a distant area, posting your need to a listserve is like mailing a postcard to several
hundred investigators across the country without knowing where any of them are. The hope is, one of them will be in
the area where you need help and will also be professional, competent and cheap. When you have an investigator referred to you
by ION, you will immediately be able to talk to and consider a Local Professional near where you need the work done without bothering several hundred others. As a group, ION Members
are more professional than a random group of private investigators, such as a listserve. An ION Member might not be the
cheapest in an area but cheaper is not always better and Russian Roulette is not cheap if you select the wrong unknown from a list.
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Q. Which investigators are in ION's database?
A. Every person we learn of who either holds a license as a private investigation agency, represents themselves as a private investigation agency or does work usually considered private investigation, is entered into our proprietary, in house database. Instead of asking investigators to tell us about themselves initially, we create a record for them and then ask. The way they respond becomes part of the record and if and when they get a case referred to them, the way they handle clients, assignments and business matters determines their rating. Most of the information in our 36,000 investigator database is not available to or accessible by anyone outside the ION office. Only investigators we have confirmed are in business and can be reached by e-mail can be found with a search in ION's Internet Site. Many others who are good investigators but do not yet monitor e-mail regularly, can be reached through ION. E-mail ion@ioninc.com or call 800 338-3463. (480 730-8088 or Fax 480 730-8103 outside the U.S and Canada.
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Q.How is ION different than a listserve for getting assignments?
A. When you receive a message through the ION system or get a call from the ION office you know someone is interested in hiring a private investigator in the area you serve and not just somewhere in the world. If you belong to a listserve with 500 members and each member posts a messsage for help once a month, you would have to read and delete 500 messages a month in order to find one where the work was in your area.
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Q. What type of data does ION keep?
A. Information has been gathered from state licensing lists, newsletters, newspapers, magazines, web sites, direct contact and experience with thousands of investigators in the course of referring over 28,000 cases since 1990.
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Q. How is it decided which investigator gets the next case?
A. The design of ION website causes ION Members to be selected over 85% of the time. ION Members always come to the top of each search results list. The display order of the ION members found in a search is changed randomly twice a week so each member is at the top of the results list about the same amount of time as any other member. No one except the potential client influences which investigator in the search results gets selected. Whether they are hired or not depends largely on the promptness of their response communication and their skill in qualifying prospects and closing sales.
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Q. What is the difference between being an ION Network Member and just being listed?
A.Only investigators who have registered with ION and paid for at least one service area on the Online site are ION members. To be and remain an ION Member they must abide by ION's professional investigator standards. ION Members do not pay referral fees for cases received online whereas non ION Members who receive cases online are asked for a 20% referral fee.
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Q. What is the Membership cost?
A.Members pay annual dues of $150 per service area. There are no referral fees and no required ongoing commissions from repeat clients from the Online Site. When cases are referred to non ION members, which will usually only happen when a suitable ION Member is not available in the area, the non member is asked for a 20% referral fee.
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Q. Does the online referral site also require the payment of referral fees by investigators?
A.When an ION member is contacted by a potential client who learned of them online and the ION staff is not involved in making the referral, no referral fee is requested. All referrals made by the ION Staff as a result of ION's telephone based "Investigators Anywhere Referral Line are subject to a 20% referral fee. Only online referrals to ION Members are without referral fees. When non-ION members are selected by a potential client online, the client is not able to get the identity or contact information for the investigator until the investigator agrees to pay the 20% non-member referral fee.
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Q.Collection of referral fees: ION's Quick integrity Test?
A. ION was built around the honor system. For years, we have given everyone the chance to demonstrate either good or bad business practices. If an investigator agrees to pay ION's referral fee and doesn't pay it, he or she has demonstrated they don't meet ION's standards of professionalism. They are barred from ION membership and are no longer reachable through ION's Online Referral Site.
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Q. What are ION's Professional Investigator Standards?
A. The standards ION expects private investigators to meet have developed over many years from talking with thousands of clients and investigators. A professional investigator is expected to:
1. Be straightforward and honest in dealing with clients and/or business associates.
2. Have a basic knowledge of private investigation.
3. Have a basic knowledge of and follow good business practices.
4. Know and attempt to comply with the laws and acceptable investigative practices under which he or she operates.
5. Communicate clearly, both verbally and in writing.
6. Treat other people with appropriate dignity and consideration.
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Q.How can an investigator join or be listed in ION's database?
A.To increase your rating in ION's system it is recommended you provide a little background
information in a separate email message to ION when you sign up as
a non ION Member on the Online Site. to
Join the ION Network, you may apply
Online by clicking here.
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Q. A potential client selected me online. It didn't work out. Aren't these people qualified?
A.Leads that come through the Automated Site are not "qualified" by an ION staff member. We do not talk to them before they click on your name. They make the selection themselves. Clients who establish a pattern of abusing the system and/or wasting investigators time will be barred from searching on the Online Site.
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Q. How many members are in my area?
A.Without selecting any investigators, you are able to see how many ION Members are in any particualar area by searching on that area. There is no rotation on the Online Site but ION Members always show up in search results ahead of Non-ION members and the position of all investigators and Members in the presentation screens changes continuously. The display order is randomized regularly.
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Q. How does the Nationwide Search feature work?
A.To show up in the results of a nationwide search, an investigator must
pay a minimum of $300 a year. The first $150 covers a local service area
and the second is the nationwide service area. Nationwide is not meant to
be for general investigators. It is for specialties for which clients are
usually not concerned with where the specialist lives; such as expert
witnesses, security consultants or highly qualified technical services
countermeasures specialists. (high budget).
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Q.When are there referral fees and how are they determined?
A. No referral fee is owed by ION Members on cases received through the Online Site. Non-ION Members who receive a case through the Online Site and anyone, Member or Non-Member, who receives a referral through an ION staff member, is asked for a 20% referral fee. RL numbers are typically assigned to staff involved referrals and call for a 20% referral fee so if you see an RL number relative to a case, 20% is probably owed. If only a client ID is shown and you were an ION Member when you received the case, it could be an online direct case with no referral fee required. Referral fees are based on the total invoice. If non-marked up expenses exceed 20% of the total, they may be excluded in determining the referral fee. Non-marked up expenses may also be excluded if the total bill is over $5000 (US). The only thing automatically excluded, for those who want to do the math, is sales tax. This simple rule is easy to interpret, and follow. If it is not acceptable, investigators should not accept ION staff referrals.
ION's referral fee is a marketing cost for those who benefit from it. We ask that an extra charge not be added and identified as the ION referral fee on a client's invoice. Charging extra for ION referred cases could drive clients away from ION so we avoid referring cases to investigators who show ION's referral fees on their invoices.
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Q. Does ION expect investigators who receive referrals to give special sub-contractor or "ION Member" rates to clients who are other investigators and/or ION Members?
A. No! Investigators can charge whatever they want as long as the client agrees and it is done properly. If your rate is high enough for you to allow the referred client a special rate and still make enough to cover costs and a reasonable profit, there is no problem with offering clients special deals. We don't want anyone to lose money on ION referrals and we never imply to members they will get special deals from other ION Members or referred investigators. Professionals should be paid adequately for professional work.
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Q.What does ION do with the ratings kept on investigators?
A.ION maintains ratings on over 20,000 private investigators in order to find the best ones with little searching when needed. The ratings are used in the online selection process only as a screening factor. Any investigator who has earned a rating of "not professional" or "unethical" in ION's internal database is barred from joining the ION Network or being displayed in ION's online referral site. Using ION, a client's chances of accidentally selecting someone who has demonstrated a lack of integrity or professinalism in the past twelve years is substantially reduced and their odds of getting someone with a good track record is increased.
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Send us your questions if you didn't find the answers here.E-Mail US.
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