Fixed Ops Roundtable

Amberly Allen, Managing Partner of Priority Commerce Automotive, built Dealer Merchant Services from a bootstrapped startup into a company serving more than 1,100 dealerships nationwide, helping dealers save a reported $110 million in credit card processing fees. After earning a spot among the fastest-growing financial services companies on the Inc. 5000, her company was acquired by publicly traded fintech Priority Commerce.

Now she's exposing a dealership expense that many operators have accepted as the cost of doing business, without realizing how much it may actually be costing them.

What if your dealership is losing thousands of dollars every month, not because of poor performance, but because of a payment process nobody has thought to question?

In this conversation with Sarah Vantine and Ted Ings on the Fixed Ops Roundtable, Allen challenges how dealers think about payment processing, customer retention, and the economics of the service drive.

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What we discuss in this episode:

• The simple word track that turns a 3% surcharge from a checkout surprise into a customer choice
• Why dealers who refused to surcharge went from 80% to just 3% in a few years
• The friction point between “your vehicle is ready” and the customer actually paying
• Why one rule about vehicle sales on credit cards matters so much when dealers win chargebacks only 27% of the time
• How Venmo, PayPal, Cash App, Klarna and crypto are changing what customers expect at the service counter
• How AI is helping controllers pull reports in seconds, without replacing the handshake

Perhaps the most revealing part of the conversation comes when Allen explains what she looks for when evaluating a dealership's existing payment operation, and just how frequently her team uncovers something that needs attention.

Your processing statement probably looks normal. That’s the problem. The costs that hurt most are usually the ones nobody has checked.

Listen to the episode featuring Amberly Allen for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Amberly Allen

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement

Ed Roberts has spent 35 years in automotive retail and runs one of the most closely watched service operations in the country. As GM and COO of Bozard Ford Lincoln in St. Augustine, Florida, he’s on pace for more than 30,000 mobile service repair orders this year. That’s more than most dealers push through their entire service drive.

His shop doesn’t have a technician shortage. Roughly 72% of his techs are millennials or younger. And while most stores are still debating whether video MPI is worth it, Ed made it a condition of employment.

In this conversation with Ted Ings, Ed explains how he built all of it and where fixed ops is heading next.

👉 Register for the upcoming Fixed Ops Roundtable Event

What we discuss in this episode:

• How Bozard eliminated its technician shortage by turning a second shift into a talent development pipeline.
• Why video inspections are changing customer trust and reshaping the service experience.
• Where AI actually delivers ROI in fixed ops, from faster diagnostics to smarter customer follow-ups.
• The $1 million investment question that exposes what most dealerships are overlooking.
• How Bozard is scaling toward 50,000 mobile service ROs and what other dealers can learn from its approach.
• Ed's bold prediction for 2027 that could change how automakers compete for service customers.

Listen to the episode featuring Ed Roberts for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Ed Roberts

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement

Mike Steinmetz went from New York actor to one of automotive’s go-to payments experts, spending 12 years inside dealerships fixing how they get paid. Today he’s the CEO of Dealerworks, a bootstrapped payments platform built specifically for car dealers.

Here’s the number most stores have stopped looking at. Dealerships typically pay between 2% and 3.5% on every card transaction. Spread that across a year of service, parts and sales, and it becomes one of the largest costs nobody is actively managing.

In this episode he breaks down how to cut processing costs without charging customers a fee, handle dual pricing where surcharging is banned, post payments straight into the DMS, and turn the last moment of the service visit into the easiest one.

👉 Register for the upcoming Fixed Ops Roundtable Event

What we discuss in this episode:

• Processing fees: Where dealers may be paying more than necessary and what options exist beyond passing fees to customers.
• DMS reconciliation: How automated payment posting and repair order closing could give accounting teams hours back.
• Service checkout: Why the final few minutes of a service visit may be creating unnecessary friction for customers.
• One connected payment system: What changes when payments across departments and rooftops are managed in one place.
• Self-service and after-hours pickup: How new payment technology and kiosks could change the way dealerships handle service customers.

If your team still reconciles transactions line by line the day after, this one is going to feel uncomfortably familiar. And useful.

Learn more at dealerworks.io

Listen to the episode featuring Mike Steinmetz for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Mike Steinmetz

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement

Dean Martin is VP of Marketing at Affinitiv, one of the first automotive software companies to connect its MPI platform directly to Meta AI glasses, and Richard Lupo, Fixed Operations Director at Apple Tree Honda and Acura in Asheville, North Carolina, are bringing a new approach to one of the most important revenue opportunities in dealership service departments: getting customers to approve recommended repairs.

And the technology they're using might surprise you.

According to research discussed in this episode, 64% of customers want photo or video evidence during a multi-point inspection. Yet only 26% of mass-market customers actually receive it.

That's a significant gap between what customers want and what service departments consistently deliver. And it raises an expensive question: How much recommended service work goes unapproved simply because customers can't see what technicians see?

👉 Register for the upcoming Fixed Ops Roundtable Event

What we discuss in this episode:

• The hands-free advantage: Why moving the camera from a technician's hand to smart glasses could change how dealerships handle video inspections.
• The revenue opportunity: What visual evidence could mean for recommended service approvals and customer-pay revenue.
• Real dealership experience: What Richard discovered after introducing Meta AI glasses to his technicians, including an unexpected change in customer feedback.
• The ROI question: Which performance indicators actually reveal whether this technology is worth the investment.
• The AI mistake to avoid: Why adding advanced technology to the wrong service process can create more problems than it solves.

AI-powered smart glasses are changing how technicians perform inspections, how customers approve repairs, and how dealerships improve service efficiency.

For fixed ops leaders, the question is no longer just what this technology can do, but what opportunities their service departments could be missing without it.

Listen to the episode featuring Dean Martin & Richard Lupo for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Dean Martin & Richard Lupo

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement

Eric Zuniga works with dealerships across North America on fixed ops strategy, technician productivity, and technology. As vertical business manager for dealerships at ALLDATA, he partners with everyone from single-rooftop stores to the largest dealer groups in the country. He looks at a service department the way an operator does: where the time goes, and where it leaks.

👉 Register for the upcoming Fixed Ops Roundtable Event

What we discuss in this episode:

Your technicians are already using AI.

Probably today. Probably on a vehicle that's on the rack right now.

Eric joins Sarah Vantine and Ted Ings to break down what AI diagnostics should look like in a dealership service department, including ALLDATA's new Diagnostic Intelligence, and what to demand before you trust any AI tool in your bays:

• Why the data source behind an AI answer matters more than its speed
• How B and C techs can test and prove a failure instead of throwing parts at it
• How one stuck tech pulls a master tech off paying work, and how to stop it
• Where AI fits in technician development and retention, and where it doesn't
• The real-vehicle test every fixed ops leader should run before buying

Diagnostic time is the hidden cap on your shop's capacity. This conversation shows where it's leaking.

Listen to the episode featuring Erik Zuniga for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Erik Zuniga

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement

Tyler Stephens of Elite EXTRA, an Epicor solution offering industry-leading last-mile logistics software, reveals how dealership parts delivery is quietly costing fixed ops departments wholesale customers they never knew they lost.

Here's why that matters right now. Your wholesale customers expect Amazon speed. Today isn't fast enough anymore. More and more, they want it within the hour.

And if you can't show them a driver's name, a live map, and a proof-of-delivery photo, they're already buying somewhere else.

👉 Register for the upcoming Fixed Ops Roundtable Event

What we discuss in this episode:

• The hybrid driver model that lets you absorb a summer volume spike without hiring for it, then scale back to the core crew you trust
• How a fully in-house fleet can quietly drain you through insurance, fuel, and salaries
• What dispatch to drop-off looks like when orders flow straight from your DMS and customers stop calling to ask "where's my part?"
• The "found it under the seat" returns problem, and how a digitized returns process decides whether a part gets resold or written off
• The three numbers worth tracking: time to service, driver performance, and route profitability
• The question every parts manager should ask before trucking a $3 item 30 miles

One fixed ops director put it in five words: "It's all about the hours." Every minute a part sits in-house is a minute your technicians aren't billing.

If your delivery operation was built for how customers bought parts five years ago, this episode shows exactly where the money is leaking.

Learn more at eliteextra.com.

Listen to the episode featuring Tyler Stephens for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Tyler Stephens

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement

Kaylee Felio spends her days inside the numbers of parts departments, helping managers fix the one line item that quietly bleeds profit all year long. As Sales & Marketing Manager at Parts Edge, she's talked to enough dealerships to know exactly where obsolescence problems actually come from — and why most "solved" problems aren't solved at all.

Here's the uncomfortable truth this episode exposes: most dealerships think their obsolescence is "handled." It's not. It's aging. Right now. While you read this.

👉 Register for the upcoming Fixed Ops Roundtable Event

What we discuss in this episode:

• The real number nobody wants to say out loud, what percentage of obsolescence is actually normal, and why the industry-standard answer might not be the right target for your store
• The silent killer behind most obsolescence: a special-order process most parts departments don't even know is broken
• The DMS trap — how switching systems (or inheriting one from "two managers ago") can hand you a mess you don't even know you own
• Protected vs. non-protected inventory — the distinction that trips up more dealerships than people realize
• What separates the dealerships that stay ahead of it from the ones scrambling at year-end write-off time

If you run a parts department, oversee fixed ops, or sign off on year-end write-offs without knowing exactly why they're that size, this episode will change how you look at your next inventory report.

The dealerships getting this right aren't smarter. They're just paying closer attention to the things that actually move the number. Kaylee tells you what those are.

Listen to the episode featuring Kaylee Felio for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Kaylee Felio

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement

Paul Elliott leads the dealer practice group at Insurance Office of America, where his team has placed over $35 million in premium protecting more than 350 franchised and independent dealerships across the country. If anyone in the industry knows exactly how dealerships bleed money on claims that never had to happen, it's him.

The FTC just sent 97 warning letters to dealerships. Yours could already be on that list and you wouldn't know it.

👉 Register for the upcoming Fixed Ops Roundtable Event

What we discuss in this episode:

In this episode, Paul walks through four real E&O claims that cost dealers serious money, and every single one started as a small, forgettable mistake. A finance manager who typed one wrong APR. A digit transposed on an odometer reading that turned 27,000 miles into a lawsuit. Hail damage that wasn't covered because nobody checked if the policy actually got bound. A repair that got fixed, but never disclosed.

None of these dealers thought they were taking a risk. That's exactly why they got sued.

Paul breaks down what actually protects you when a claim like this lands on your desk, and it isn't a bigger insurance policy. It's the two-minute habits most dealerships skip: the second signature, the printed vehicle history report, the one phone call that confirms coverage before the customer drives off the lot.

If you run F&I, service, or recon and you've never asked "could this come back on us," this episode is the 45 minutes that answers it before a customer's attorney does.

Listen to the episode featuring Paul Elliott for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Paul Elliott

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement

Dave Anderson is the CEO & Co-Founder of Evenflow AI, a scheduling platform that's syncing in real time with dealership DMS systems and posting 20-30% revenue jumps for the stores using it. He's not new to this conversation either — if you were at NADA in Vegas this year, there's a decent chance you already caught his name floating around.

👉 Register for the upcoming Fixed Ops Roundtable Event

What we discuss in this episode:

On this episode of Fixed Ops Roundtable, Dave sits down with Sarah Vantine and Ted Ings to go after a scheduling habit almost every dealership still runs on: counting cars. Four advisors, four appointments every 15 minutes, all day long. It looks organized on paper. Dave walks through the math on why it's actually bleeding gross profit before the first advisor even checks a car in.

He's got the data to back it up. A Toyota store's 30-day variability chart. A Honda store where overloaded days dropped hours-per-RO from 1.9 to 1.7, and what that costs across a hundred repair orders. The number that should stop a service manager cold: dealerships running the old way are only capturing about 70% of what their shop could actually produce.

If your shop swings between drowning in backlog and standing around with nothing to flag, this one's worth the 40 minutes.

Listen to the episode featuring Dave Anderson for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Dave Anderson

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement

Andrew Lee has spent 30 years inside the phone lines of dealership service departments, not in a tech lab. He's the Sales VP at AlphaDrive AI, a company started in 1993 by a woman calling customers back after service visits, now trusted by over 1,000 dealerships, including Lithia and Sherwood Ford, one of the largest Ford dealers in Canada.

👉 Register for the upcoming Fixed Ops Roundtable Event

What we discuss in this episode:

Right now, your dealership is losing 15% to 30% of its incoming calls. Not leads. Not clicks. Phone calls, from customers already trying to give you money.

Andrew sat down with Sarah Vantine and Ted Ings to explain exactly what that's costing you, and how AlphaDrive's AI closes the gap without making your team learn new software or your customers feel like they're talking to a robot.

By the end of this episode you'll know:

• The real reason dealers lose calls even when their BDC is fully staffed
• Why the AI that works doesn't create more work
• The exact RO and revenue lift dealers are seeing (8-20%) and how much less it costs than a traditional BDC (42%)
• How Sherwood Ford turned this into 20% RO growth without losing the human touch in the drive

If you've ever wondered how much money is walking out the door every time a phone rings twice too long, this episode gives you the number, and the fix.

Listen to the episode featuring Andrew Lee for even more insights!

Enjoying The Fixed Ops Roundtable Podcast? Please leave a rating and review 👇

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fixed-ops-roundtable/id1608656237

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/15HHYoyvCo1PSFwYn02UXY

Thanks, Andrew Lee

Connect with Ted Ings and the Fixed Ops Roundtable:

• Register for the next Fixed Ops Roundtable Event
• Ted Ings on LinkedIn
• Center for Performance Improvement