...m... Yes, it's totally possible they have a consultant or something in their ear telling them not to "waste" time and money on a partner that has provided them no real (i.e. measured) value. I know some of my last employer's worst decisions cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars up front before they ever cost them good well and development time.

People do love paying large sums of money so they can have a scapegoat. "Accountability sink" is a phrase than entered my lexicon several months ago, coming from Dan Davie's The Unaccountability Machine, though the context I was introduced to it was why everyone with an MBA, or with a job title that starts with "Director" or ends with "Officer" seem to have lost their minds over plausible-but-wrong text generation. But it's all the same instinct: "Someone else told me to do it, so it's not my fault."