I wanted to post here last week about the fact that I had been told I
could not buy a Zones 1-D one-day travelcard from my local National Rail
station, operated by Southeastern Railway, to ask if this refusal was
correct.

It resulted in me paying (in two separate chunks) more for my travel
from Crayford to Chesham than I would have done to do the same journey
in the opposite direction, for instance.

However, being a good Usenet citizen I did a Google Groups search and
found countless previous discussions of this topic. They all confirmed
that this was indeed the case, and offered various workarounds for the
situation. So I didn't bother posting.

I did, though, think that this was a ridiculous state of affairs, so I
contacted TfL to ask them why they didn't let National Rail sell these
tickets. They replied that it was nothing to do with them and I would
need to contact Southeastern.

I've just received a reply from Southeastern stating:

"I can confirm that we should have been able to sell you the
aforementioned travelcard, and I can assure you that I will bring this
matter to the attention of [...] the Station Manager at Crayford, i[n]
order that he can arrange the appropriate training to prevent a similar
incident occurring in the future."

So my question now is: what is going on here? Why do the history of
newsgroup discussions on this topic, the automatic ticket-selling
machines at Crayford and the staff member at Crayford (who did seem to
be trying to find the ticket in some sort of book of what he could sell)
all agree that this purchase isn't possible, but Southeastern customer
services insist it should be? Has this changed recently or something?

Any enlightenment welcomed!

Paul