Love rats scurry to alibi firm

Love rats scurry to alibi firm

A German company that offers alibis for love rats who want a fling on the side has proved so successful that it is now expanding abroad.

The Perfect Alibi agency has been such a success in providing straying Germans with plausible excuses for a weekend away that it is to open an office in Austria next month.

Perfect Alibi head Jens Schlingensief says he gets around 350 customers a month coming to him for the perfect excuse to give their wives, husbands or partners.

The lies can cost as little as £5 for a reassuring SMS to be sent to a distrustful spouse, or as much as £40 for an invitation to a weekend seminar.

Schlingensief says: "The favourite of our services is the written invitation. First we send an invitation for a business meeting and include with it a description of the seminar and the costs.

"While the partner believes their loved one has gone to Hamburg for the weekend for example, our customer is free to take their lover wherever they like."

Perfect Alibi employers then sit by a fake telephone all weekend fielding calls from partners by pretending to be the hotel receptionist and then secretly transferring the calls to the customer's mobile.

Schlingensief says he does not know his clients personally and the majority use his services over the internet. But he says he does ask for enough information to make sure his alibis are "watertight".

"I have to know enough about the client to make sure his or her alibi fits. There's no point sending a fork-lift truck driver to a doctor's conference," he said.

And Schlingensief says he doesn't suffer any sleepless nights over the fact that he provides people with bare-faced lies.

"Lies, necessary lies, is something you can discuss for a long time. That is a moral aspect. But I don't have any such thoughts. We are providing a service in modern-day Germany."