We now have contingency bidding available for use. Where bidgroups give you the ability to only bid on an item if you lose the items preceding it, contingencies allow you to specify what items to buy only if you WIN a specific auction.

This can be very useful, for example, when you only want to bid on a monitor if you first win a computer.

Look for more info about contingency bidding to be available in our help section next week.

Starting a contingency is fairly simple. You just have to click the "contingencies" button on any bid from the MyBids page. From there you can specify which items to bid on if you win the current item.

Cheers!

It's also a great thing to use to save on shipping. For example you can tell it to only bid on a second or third item from the same seller if you win the first one.

Since you'd already be paying for shipping on the first item it may then be worthwhile to bid on a couple additional items from the same seller since the additional shipping costs are usually free, or very low.