For a few months, I’ve been working with someone who provides a service that I want to outsource, but they aren’t doing a good job. They aren’t responsive, I have to chase them around to send me an invoice, and I’m not sure if the work is getting done. When a deadline was missed and I inquired about it, they were very quick to blame someone who works for them instead of owning it and saying it would get done. Obviously they aren’t checking the work of the people who work for them.

It appears through their posts on social media that they are going through a tough time personally, which perhaps has impacted me. I’m used to this type of behavior from my own family members and see how in the past this makes me take on more work because I feel bad for them. But everything is very disorganized and chaotic and as a result I can’t operate as proactive as I’d like to. Most recently I emailed them almost a week ago and asked for an invoice and status on a couple tasks and haven’t heard back. A couple days after, I emailed them checking in on the question figuring they were busy. Still silence. But then I received an email from them that was obviously meant for someone else… so I responded and said I think they sent me the wrong email and I want to check that they received my email. Still silence.

I’ve only worked with them a couple months and thought it was just complicated getting started, then felt it was understandable they were having personal issues which I tried to be a human about (they didn’t come to me with them directly but post publicly). But now, regardless of the issue, I just want to hire someone else because the customer service is horrible and I want the freedom of knowing things are getting done. This is wasting my time to think about and deal with.

So given that they aren’t responsive to my emails but are clearly sending emails to others and not on vacation, do you have advice on how to end this? I think they will try to convince me they’ll fix things up, but my mind says to just hire someone else (there are plenty of people who do this task) and change my passwords to the accounts, then notify them I won’t be continuing. They don’t have a contract set up, which now I see as a red flag that they were disorganized from the start. Part of what I’m feeling right now is that somehow this is going to come back “at me”- even though I feel I’m in the right to want to work with someone who is more professional and reliable.