In general they should be used as a last resort, and not the first thing to be quoted when trying to resolve a customer's problem.
They are. That's why guards have discretion. I am not disagreeing that in the case of fastest journey time which you have given, it
should be appropriate for the guard to exercise discretion. Such a matter could then be reported and resolved by other means, such as rewording routeing permission on the tickets, to enable such a journey to be made with one ticket.
Unfortunately in cases where, using your own words, the passenger is quite obviously "
taking the p**s", discretion is not normally appropriate.
Imagine instead that they spoke to company representative B. He knows that technically doing what the customer wants is in breach of the T&C's but he recognises the bigger picture. He knows there's no point in losing a good customer over something so trivial - especially as he recognises that no harm is being done to the company and no revenue is being lost. I don't call that 'giving into the customer', I call it the sensible option. And I know which of the two people I'd want working for me.
I am sure you will start having problems when representative B is giving permission for customers to start installing on lots more machines in various places, even if that is what the customer might be "happy" about.
I doubt that the company would be so lenient if it is easy to detect cases where two copies are being installed at the same time. If it is unenforceable, why not as well be generous and make them happy?
The railway industry largely works off the same principle.
The only reason I am questioning this is because you gave the impression in your earlier arguments that it is vitally important to keep the customer "happy". I think we quite agree on the middle ground that if what the customer/passenger does is reasonable then there should be some leeway irrespective of the background terms.
To use a railway example... take Advance tickets. You're not allowed to resell tickets. But say circumstances have changed and you no longer need to make the journey. You can't get a refund. So what is really wrong about letting the customer sell the tickets on to someone else for face value? Yes, it's against the T&Cs - but it's not really losing the company any revenue.
So where do you draw the line? In short, the rule of thumb is "Are they taking the p**s"? If not, then let it go. If yes, then you use the T&C's to their full extent.
Of course there are differing opinion as to whether reselling tickets at face value or lower is reasonable and losing TOCs revenue. One argument is that due to the lack of flexibility with Advance tickets, TOCs would naturally expect some people to not make their train and have built this fact into the costings and hence pricing of Advance tickets. If tickets can now be resold, they might have to take into account the fact that some people who currently buy tickets from them will instead be buying from those whose tickets were previously worthless and reconsider the price of Advance fares.
TOCs do allow reasonable transfer of tickets by virtual that it is not enforceable, such as preventing the transfer of a ticket from one person to another within the family or between close friends and done in private, provided that the correct discount entitlement is obeyed. Similar arguments apply with people on invalid routes which are reasonable, where most guards would exercise discretion, partly because it is not always practical to check NRG for all tickets. Doesn't the software industry work in similar ways?
Furthermore there is also the complication if Advance ticket could be resold that there will be differing terms for different tickets in that respect, which is not what we really need on top of the maze we already have today.
Edit:
I spotted
this blog where one passenger has mocked-up their suggestion for an improved ticket. Have a read, their observations are spot-on and their mock-up ticket is a really good starting point.
Yes, the design of tickets can be massively improved and I believe the industry is working on a solution for that.
There are many good examples that people have done, however I do not believe this one quoted is. What happens if the passenger has more than one reservable leg to his journey? I don't believe that we can achieve a consistent design across all ticket types which can include all reservation details on one coupon, given the physical constraint of the size of our tickets, without reducing font size significantly. However it would be quite possible to include everything on two coupons.