I have been working with a client for a few weeks, and recently I have needed to liaise with another of their contractors to sort out some technical issues relating to the work.
During the course of the email exchanges, the client essentially accused the other contractor of lying and demanded proof of their work (which they immediately provided). There was no reason to think the contractor was lying or in any way being less than completely professional. The client did not apologise, but more-or-less brushed it off, then proceeded to ask me privately to check over the other contractor's work (the work was fine). They also privately implied to me that they thought the other contractor was trying to overcharge them for the work, which I do not believe to be the case.
I consider this to be rude, unprofessional behaviour and if they treated me like this I would refuse to continue to work with them. I've been getting little red flags over the past few weeks about the client but this is "the big one".
One consideration is that there is a third contractor on the project who I have an excellent working relationship with who I would not want to offend.
I've been paid for work-to-date, so I'm not losing anything by dropping the client now.
- Am I over-reacting to this? I appreciate that this is a very hard question to answer.
- What is the most professional way to drop a client given this situation?