The railway really needs to get a disciplinary handle on this and emphasize to staff that implying permission to travel without ticket endorsement is serious misconduct because of the serious legal issues it may cause passengers later.
Be careful what you wish for there, though, because that sort of approach will likely mean staff simply stop exercising discretion and stick to the letter of the rules in all cases. People would generally rather be accused of being jobsworths than threatened with disciplinary action!
Yes - One of them was annoyingly inconsistent though, at Paddington this time not Reading. He said yes, jump on this earlier service as it’s not busy and I won’t charge you for that, but I will have to charge you a supplement as this is a peak time service and you have an advance for an off-peak train.
I thought, so you’re willing to overlook “Booked train only” but not the fact that it’s a peak time train, that you yourself declared to be not busy. I declined and got the booked train.
I can see how that’s annoying, but I suppose the way to look at it is that
any flexibility shown to let you deviate from your ticket is them doing you a favour, and they are quite within their rights to insist that you either honour the conditions and take the later train, or pay the full price for a new ticket. Of course the downside of exercising the discretion is that it can lead to allegations of unfairness/inconsistency and muddies the waters. If someone reacts badly to it not being exercised (I’m not suggesting
you would have done), it’s becomes less likely to be exercised in the future.
