The following is not critical of anyone, but trying to see where this would fit in.
I've been thinking about contingency bid groups. I've come up with a couple of reasons when someone would use them:
1) Prerequisite item.
2) Reduced shipping cost (same seller).
Prerequisite item would seem to be limited to 2 auctions. The issue: "If I don't get the first one, then the I don't need the second one." An example would be a 2 volume book with each volume on a separate auction. If I don't win volume one, don't snipe volume two because I don't want to start reading the book in the middle, or only read the first half.
I don't think prerequisite item would apply to more then 2 because with each auction I increase my chances of not getting the complete set, but this could be a mistake on my part.
Now, lets talk about this for reduced shipping cost. Lets say a seller has 5 items that I want. Would I tell AS that if I don't win #1, skip 2 thru 5? What would be the difference between winning 1 thru 4 and winning 2 thru 5, or winning 1 thru 3 and 5? Might I be willing to bid on 3 thru 5 even if I didn't win 1 and 2?
At first brush, the idea seemed to have merit, I'm just not sure how it would work.
This is not an original idea on my part:
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P.S. If anyone is thinking, "It all depends", then that might be difficult to program and complicated to use an it-all-depends.