How Erskine's Needful Things, Inc. Runs

About the Business

What started out as a lark, "Hey, let's sell some of this stuff so I don't have to dust it anymore!", has become a full-time obsession, "How much do you think we could get for the baby's favorite Beanie Baby?" 

Erskine's Needful Things is a family affair: Shelly, the boss of the outfit and Mark, the labor.

Erskine's Needful Things #1 priority is CUSTOMER SATISFACTION.  Toward that end, we ALWAYS leave feedback first, ALWAYS ship an item within twenty-four hours of receiving payment (except Sunday, of course), give a full refund plus shipping on any item purchased from us if, FOR ANY REASON, the buyer is dissatisfied, and strive to be as helpful and honest as possible in all our listings and transactions. 

In addition to our commitment to you, you also have SquareTrade's commitment through their Buyer Protections program. That means that any transaction with Erskine's Needful Things is backed with $10,000 Purchase Protection, $100 Low-Price Protection and Scam Protection. To get these protections on any item we sell, you simply need to activate the protection package before the close of auction by clicking on the Buyer Protections banner on our listing.

Where We WISH Erskine's Needful Things, Inc. Was Located

About Us

Mark

I've been selling all of my life.  Early in the autumn of 2005, I began to suffer from brick and mortar anxiety.  Although it was entirely possible that the anxiety was the result of personal financial pressures, the naturally ambitious cast of my personality already had me thinking more in terms of the need to traverse new and uncharted territory.  Confronted by my computer illiteracy, I began to lament all of the things my six children had tried to tell me about the glories of the Information Highway.  True, I had been spending most of my waking hours paying the bills.  But during my leisure time I had never ventured onto the Internet, never thrust my surfboard through the pipeline of the Web, never considered the Vesuvial economic possibilities of e-commerce.  Forty-seven years old and fast approaching fifty, I had let my life slip away under the harsh flourescent lights of American business-as-usual and was now forced to admit how poorly I had prepared myself for the twenty-first century.

The very next day, my wife introduced me to eBay, or at least our bank statement did.  It was something I was curious about, anyway, and now that I could hear Time's winged hoofbeats clattering up the driveway, it seemed like a good time to get cracking on "Al Gore's invention" and another eBay business was born!  
 
Shelly

I teach eighth grade Language Arts!  Unlike my aged husband, I'm not yet forty.  I like having my husband home at a decent hour- MOST DAYS!- yet as I took stock of our revolting, threadbare and dessicated checkbook, I was forced to admit that I had too long shielded my eyes from the horrid truth and that maybe a second job at Home Depot or Wal-Mart wouldn't hurt Mark too much!  Then I bought a Coach Handbag on eBay!  Then another.  THEN ANOTHER!  As the days went by, it became clear that shopping on eBay was more fun than shopping at Wal-Mart, Target, and the mall together.  It is hard to say exactly what pushed me over the edge.  Certainly, the need for a second income could not have helped.  Yet when all is said and done, it was probably the thought of going to bed at night alone- with nobody to rub my head that made me agree to take this bold step!