Professional Scalper
Hilda Bagnoli
Description:
This upgraded beet scalper singulates each beet for greater efficiency and less tare.
Conventional scalpers use a simple skid plate and glide over the top of each row of beets. This allows smaller beets and beets grown close together to avoid being scalped by the defoliator.
The Pro-Ag Beet Scalper allows the folliage to pass through the tines while creating downward tension to singulate each beet no matter how small or how close together. This increases the effeciency of your Amity Defoliator.
*This item can be shipped.
Call 701.775.5585 to order.
Testimonials: This is Travis and Bryan Uggerud and we farm near Drayton ND. We ordered a new Amity Defoliatory for th e2013 crop season from Pro-Ag Equipment in Grafton. We put the new Pro-Ag scalper option on the back of it. We really liked the idea of a lightweight scalper that only had one linkage point, and very little maintenance.
When we were able to start using the scalpers we were really happy with the sensing part being very close to the knife to be able to read variable sized beets within a row accurately. Also the three tab sensing unit was nice because it allowed larger chunks of debris to flow through the scalper and not plug the knife. The lightweight unit was also nice because we had no knockout from the defoliator all year. This was a nice change from old heavy we remember from the past.
Box-office giant Ticketmaster is recruiting professional scalpers who cheat its own system to expand its resale business and squeeze more money out of fans, a CBC News/Toronto Star investigation reveals.
Company representatives told them Ticketmaster's resale division turns a blind eye to scalpers who use ticket-buying bots and fake identities to snatch up tickets and then resell them on the site for inflated prices. Those pricey resale tickets include extra fees for Ticketmaster.
CBC shared its findings with Alan Cross, a veteran music journalist and host of the radio program The Ongoing History of New Music, who suspects the ticket-buying public will be far from impressed: "This is going to be a public relations nightmare."
By partnering with scalpers, Ticketmaster has done an about-face from its position of less than a decade ago when then-CEO Irving Azoff told U.S. legislators: "I believe that scalping and resales should be illegal."
Two floors above the slot machines and blackjack tables at Caesars, Ticketmaster was one of dozens of vendors and speakers at the convention, which bills itself as a "one-of-a-kind networking event" for industry leaders and small businesses alike.
The audience heard that Ticketmaster has developed a professional reseller program and within the past year launched TradeDesk, a web-based inventory management system for scalpers. The company touts it as "The most powerful ticket sales tool. Ever."
TradeDesk allows scalpers to upload large quantities of tickets purchased from Ticketmaster's site and quickly list them again for resale. With the click of a button, scalpers can hike or drop prices on reams of tickets on Ticketmaster's site based on their assessment of fan demand.
Neither TradeDesk nor the professional reseller program are mentioned anywhere on Ticketmaster's website or in its corporate reports. To access the company's TradeDesk website, a person must first send in a registration request.
One of the presenters, who was unaware he was speaking with undercover journalists, insisted that Ticketmaster's resale division isn't interested in whether clients use automated software and fake identities to bypass the box office's ticket-buying limits.
CBC News obtained a copy of Ticketmaster's official reseller handbook, which outlines these fees. It also details Ticketmaster's reward system for scalpers. As scalpers hit milestones such as $500,000 or $1 million in annual sales, Ticketmaster will knock a percentage point off its fees.
The Ticketmaster employee who gave the video conference demonstration in March said 100 scalpers in North America, including a handful in Canada, are using TradeDesk to move between a few thousand and several million tickets per year.
Ticketmaster has declined repeated requests for an interview. CBC and the Toronto Star submitted a list of specific questions about the company's scalper program. In a statement to CBC News, the company made no mention of the program, nor did it comment on its recruitment effort in Las Vegas.
"It is categorically untrue that Ticketmaster has any program in place to enable resellers to acquire large volumes of tickets at the expense of consumers," the statement said. "Ticketmaster's seller code of conduct specifically prohibits resellers from purchasing tickets that exceed the posted ticket limit for an event."
"As the world's leading ticketing platform, representing thousands of teams, artists and venues, we believe it is our job to offer a marketplace that provides a safe and fair place for fans to shop, buy and sell tickets in both the primary and secondary markets," wrote Catherine Martin, senior vice-president of communications, based in Los Angeles.
Box-office giant Ticketmaster may have benefitted from looking the other way on ticket scalping-related violations of its own terms of service, a Canadian report revealed on Sep. 19. Jamie Squire/Getty Images hide caption
Two of the journalists went undercover with hidden cameras and posed as professional resellers to attend Ticket Summit 2018, a trade convention held in July at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. A CBC journalist also obtained access to an online video conference demonstration of the TradeDesk platform back in March.
The CBC has also made public a document which it says is Ticketmaster's handbook for resellers. The handbook outlines a reward system for resellers. For example, the CBC writes, "As scalpers hit milestones such as $500,000 or $1 million in annual sales, Ticketmaster will knock a percentage point off its fees."
In a follow-up statement provided to NPR the morning of Sep. 20, Ticketmaster denies having a program that allows customers to buy large tranches of tickets, which was not at issue in the CBC/Star report. The company continues by saying it does "not condone the statements made by the employee as the conduct described clearly violates our terms of service," and that it will put "additional measures in place to proactively monitor for this type of inappropriate activity."
But in the first part of the CBC/Toronto Star investigation, published Tuesday, the journalists asserted that resold tickets are "particularly lucrative" for Ticketmaster, because the company reportedly profits from two separate sets of charges collected from the same ticket. "For example," they write, "if Ticketmaster collects $25.75 on a $209.50 ticket on the initial sale, when the owner posts it for resale for $400 on the site, the company stands to collect an additional $76 on the same ticket."
The Canadian report compounds some pressure on both Live Nation and Ticketmaster. According to reporting earlier this year from The New York Times, the Justice Department is in the process of reviewing complaints that the concert giant "has used its control over concert tours to pressure venues into contracting with its subsidiary, Ticketmaster."
In a blog post responding to the Times' allegations, Ticketmaster president Jared Smith wrote that the company's success "is not the result of any unfair advantages resulting from being a part of Live Nation Entertainment," but a result of its parent company's investments into its products, alluding to the complaints as having been filed by AEG, its chief competition. "I would much rather talk about the things we are doing to ensure that consumers get fair access to tickets," Smith continued, "but I guess none of that sells newspapers."
When Apple Vision Pro launched late last week, there were two main topics of conversation. The first is all of the things it can do and how well it can do them. The other is the price: it starts at $3,499 with 256GB of storage and goes up from there.
That's a lot of money, but there's actually someone trying to charge more than Apple: scalpers. They're often trying to start around $4,000, with some asking for as much as $10,000 in an attempt to make extra cash.
Scalpers have unfortunately become a fixture of major technology launches. Remember the PlayStation 5 shortages that started in 2020? Those didn't resolve until just last year. Or what about graphics cards during the early pandemic? Those all went on third-party marketplaces as scalpers and the bots they employ have served as unwanted middlemen for financial gain.
But with Vision Pro, that doesn't seem to be working. When I went to my local Apple Store on the evening of the launch for the demo experience, the specialist who gave me the demo told me that if I wanted the 512GB or 1TB models, I could get one immediately. That was right before the store closed.
As I write this, I could get a 256GB model from Apple and pick it up tomorrow at a store near my office or the one closest to my home. Others are available this week. Shipping might take a bit more time, as it would arrive closer to the end of the month.
And yet, scalpers are taking to eBay for a premium. Why would you do that when you could get it from the manufacturer?
This is compounded in difficulty by the degree of customization involved in buying a Vision Pro. It requires two scans from an iPhone or iPad with Apple's Face ID. These measurements decide which size straps should come in the box, as well as which size light shield will fit your face.
Some sellers list the size they bought (presumably, revealing the size of their noggin in the process); in other cases, you may go in blind on the sizing. As long as there's stock in an Apple Store near you, it makes far more sense, for $3,499.99, to go get it fitted to your own head. The idea that someone would want to buy an ill-fitting Vision Pro for more money doesn't make much sense, especially because they might end up going to Apple anyway and shelling out $199 for a new light seal and cushions or $99 for a new headband.
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