Is it not possible to buy 'anytime' rail tickets any more?

coffeehound

Thanks for the replies.  Yes 'advance' was a red herring; I should have said 'off-peak return' etc.

As mentioned by martindow, the ticket office are happy to still dispense these basic tickets so it doesn't seem to be mandatory to book specific services and seats iro covid.  In fact it is causing people to use the cramped ticket office when they could be using the outdoor machines, which is daft.  

I would disagree with jbuchanangb's point that the machines are trying to help the customer get the best value.  Here at least, it is very hard to find the cheapest tickets.  E.g. There are tickets restricted to one train company that are a fair bit cheaper than the ones for any operator, but you used to have to drill down through many screens to find them.  Not even sure you still can find them now.  I think forcing the pax to choose specific services is for data gathering.

There was one example of how bad the system is earlier in the year when there was some fault with the live data feed to the machines at the local station.  They point-blank refused to sell a ticket on one line because it couldn't get the live data to serve the immediate services to choose from.  When the ticket office was shut, you just had to get on the train and hope you didn't get fined.  The machines really should have the option to sell simple tickets without all that overhead 😡