I'm sure this is a fairly simple answer, but I'm not familiar enough with the internal workings of DNS to know.

My boss asked me to transfer a website from one hosting service to another.

We have FTP access to the original hosting account, but that is all. The original hosting account belongs to the person we bought the domain from. He has become uncooperative.

The original hosting account includes DNS service, but like I said, we do not have access to that part of the account.

So, I've transferred the files to the new hosting service, but I don't know what to do regarding DNS. Do I need to contact the original DNS providers and tell them to remove their A and MX records? In other words, if I add the appropriate records to the new hosting service, will the new records override the older ones? Or will a conflict occur where the old and new DNS records battle each other for authority?

You need to change the name server listed for your domain at your domain's registrar. Once you do that, the old ones will not matter and the new ones will be used.

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Yeah, that makes sense. I was making it more complicated than it needed to be (as usual).

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.