The new Dongle didn't make a difference and the skipping issue still continues to happen.
I sent a request to AVIN to see if I could return the unit based on all of that. They have a 7 day return policy with a 20% restocking fee... Maybe they'll be willing to provide an exception because of the issue(s).
If not, I may be putting it up for sale if anybody would be interested, the apps and everything work fine but I wanted this for CarPlay, and obviously there are some underlying software issues.