Amazon DSP contract renewal: what Amazon looks for and how UK operators secure theirs
Most Amazon DSP owners don't think seriously about their contract renewal until the conversation with their Station Operations Manager is already scheduled. By that point, the preparation window has largely closed. The evidence Amazon needs — scorecard trends over months, not just last week's snapshot, compliance records with no gaps, van inspection logs — either exists already or it doesn't. You can't backfill it in two weeks.
This guide explains what Amazon evaluates in a DSP contract review, what documentation is typically expected, and how to build the audit trail that makes renewal straightforward rather than stressful.
What a DSP contract renewal actually involves
Amazon's agreements with DSPs are renewed periodically, with reviews that vary by region and station. The process is not a single conversation — it's an evaluation of whether your DSP meets Amazon's standards across multiple dimensions: delivery performance, compliance, driver stability, and operational maturity.
The review typically involves your Delivery Station Manager and sometimes Amazon's field team. Expect to discuss Cortex scorecard performance over the review period, your driver records, van inspection compliance, and how your business has responded to previous concerns. The operators who handle this calmly are the ones who have been tracking these things routinely — not the ones who've spent the previous fortnight hunting for emails and screenshots.
The metrics that matter most
Your Cortex scorecard is the most visible data point in any renewal discussion. Amazon looks at your composite status over the review period — not just whether you're Fantastic Plus this week, but whether your performance has been stable or trending upward over several months.
The metrics that carry the most weight are those Amazon can directly tie to customer experience: DCR (whether your routes complete), DNR (whether customers report missing parcels), DPMO (physical defects), and CDF (customer satisfaction). A single difficult week matters far less than a pattern of misses.
The harder situation is an operator who is technically hitting thresholds but whose trend has been declining over two quarters. Moving from Fantastic Plus to Fantastic to Great signals a management problem even if the numbers are still in range. Amazon notices the direction, not just the snapshot.
Compliance is a non-negotiable
Delivery performance gets most of the attention, but compliance is where renewal reviews can surprise operators. Amazon expects your right-to-work records to be current for every driver on your rota. A driver who passed their check at onboarding but whose visa has since expired is your legal exposure, not Amazon's — and gaps in your records signal that your compliance process isn't active.
The same applies to driving licences. An expired licence sitting unnoticed on your active driver list tells Amazon that you're not monitoring your own compliance. MOT and insurance expiry on your vans is a similar test — a vehicle on road after its MOT expired is a problem regardless of whether it caused an incident.
The paper trail Amazon will expect includes: up-to-date right-to-work records for every driver (including any visa expiry dates), current driving licence checks, van inspection records for the review period, and evidence that your response to compliance gaps is timely.
Driver stability signals operational health
Amazon pays attention to driver turnover and absence rates even if these aren't directly scored on Cortex. High turnover typically correlates with lower scorecard performance — newer drivers are more likely to generate DPMO events and lower POD compliance — but it also signals that your operation is harder to manage at scale.
An operator who has the same core driver pool they had twelve months ago, with a handful of well-onboarded new starters, presents a fundamentally different picture to one who turns over half their fleet every quarter. Stability is a proxy for operational maturity.
What to have ready before the conversation
When your SOM asks how you're managing a particular area, the right answer is a document or a screen — not a verbal assurance. Operators who make good impressions in renewal discussions tend to have:
- Scorecard trend data covering the review period, not just the most recent week
- A complete compliance register with expiry dates — current, not reconstructed
- Daily van inspection logs for the review period, with photos
- Incident and damage reports with outcomes documented
- Payroll records traceable to routes and Cortex data
None of this requires a filing system built from scratch. It requires having a process in place early enough that the records have accumulated by the time you need them.
Building the audit trail early
The operators who are least prepared for a contract review are almost always the ones who built their compliance and record-keeping processes reactively — after an incident, after a near-miss, or after hearing that a review was coming. The ones who are best prepared ran the same routine every week whether or not anything was pressing.
That means daily van walkarounds logged with photos, not occasional spot checks. It means driving licence and right-to-work expiry dates tracked proactively, with reminders before anything lapses. And it means reviewing your Cortex trend weekly, so you know your trajectory six weeks before it becomes visible to Amazon.
Where DSPOps fits in
DSPOps tracks Cortex scorecard metrics per driver so your trend data is always current — not something you rebuild from weekly exports before a meeting. Right-to-work, driving licence, and vehicle MOT and insurance expiry dates generate automatic reminders, so nothing lapses unnoticed. Daily van inspection logs with photos and video build an audit trail whether or not you're expecting a review. And payroll records are calculated from Amazon's Work Summary Tool with every line traceable to a route.
The goal is a system where renewal preparation is a two-hour review of existing records — not a two-week reconstruction project. If you'd like to see how it works for your DSP, you can book a 20-minute demo and we'll walk through your data live on the call.