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Walmart will literally do the same thing. I order cereal from them because it's cheaper, and they have free delivery. But they split the order into two shipments -- one from the store, one from the warehouse. Walmart is not yet good at this type of logistics.

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This is assuming two shipments is "worse" from Walmart's perspective.

Fulfilling 2 of an item from a store might trigger a resupply, which takes truck space, which pushes other, higher-margins out of stock or into danger levels, etc.

Which isn't to say that Walmart's system isn't "dumb", but is to say that it's a very complex system, operating in realtime, and what look like dumb outcomes may in fact be optimized (according to whatever internal goals their logistics system has).

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