This Super Off Peak Travelcard ticket has caused a lot of problems since it was introduced. I don't think the restrictions have
ever been properly implemented in
any of the journey planners so I'm not surprised to hear it is still causing problems. Whilst the problems I've had which I've outlined below are specific to the Super Off Peak
Weekend Travelcard (rather than on a weekday as I think the OP was travelling) I suspect it's the same issue, that journey planners cannot seemingly distinguish between journeys wholly within the Travelcard zones (which are not time restricted) and those outside, which are.
For example if you put in a journey from Woking to London Euston at say 7am on a Saturday, returning at 9pm into the National Rail journey planner, you should be offered this ticket on all the journeys offered. Instead some are priced at £19.30 (the Super Off Peak ticket) and others at £24.10 (the off peak ticket), though just to add to the confusion it shows both tickets as "Off Peak Travelcard". The issue seems to be that the time restrictions should only apply to the journey you make
into the Travelcard zones (from outside the zones) and the final return journey to outside the zones, not to journeys wholly within the Travelcard zones. However it seems that the journey planners in fact apply the time restrictions to any journey. In this example, the services where it suggests alighting at Clapham Junction and taking a train into London Victoria (rather than Waterloo) are priced higher because it's incorrectly applied the time restriction on trains leaving Clapham Junction (which should only apply when travelling out of the zones).
I presume in the OPs case the barrier staff have also incorrectly applied this restriction even though this part of the journey from London Waterloo to Wandsworth Town was wholly within the zones and should be covered by the Travelcard portion of the ticket. The problem is made worse because the restrictions are not made clear on the National Rail website either (see
http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/UR) where it does not make clear the time restrictions are only to the out-of-zone part of the journey (this is made clearer on the SWR website).
South Western Railways own journey planner never even offers the Super Off Peak Travelcard for the example journey I mentioned (Woking to London Euston), so they are overcharging people. This makes cases like this even more problematic because barrier staff (or their managers) might then show you on a journey planner that your ticket is not valid for the journey (even though it is, but the planner is in error) there by "proving" they are right (even though they are not).
I've tried hard (with zero success) to get this changed, with South Western Railway, National Rail Enquiries and the Rail Delivery Group. South Western Railway agreed that their journey planner was incorrectly offering only the more expensive ticket for this journey and suggested I use their telesales line (as they told me their own internal system does offer the correct ticket) and that they would pass my comments on to their website team. I don't know if they did, but even if they did, nothing changed, their planner still overcharges. National Rail Enquiries insisted their website was right. After exchanging numerous emails with Rail Delivery Group I did finally get a more satisfactory response, which I've pasted below.
I’m pleased to let you know though that we contacted the Pricing Manager at South Western Railway and have now received a response.
He mentioned that the Restriction UR is used for both the rail-only and Day Travelcards. The Online Journey Planner cannot currently deal with journeys via (e.g changing at Clapham Junction), and therefore, treats each change as a separate journey, but a large body of work is currently taking place to improve the Journey Planner and indeed the de-complicate fares like these. In the meantime, I can confirm that this travelcard is valid at any time at weekends when you’re inside Zones 1-6. The departure time restriction at Clapham Junction is only intended for journeys to stations beyond Zone 6.
National Rail Enquiries has three opportunities a year to update fares and restrictions when they are provided by the Train Operating Companies in January, May and September.
The Pricing Manager has assured us that he will look into this in the next fare change period which will be taking place in May 2018.
Whether anything will actually change in May time will tell, but I doubt it given how long journey planners have been wrongly applying the restrictions on this ticket. I thought it was a breach of franchise agreement if TOCs are not offering the cheapest ticket for the journey (as SWR and other TOCs are not in this cases), yet nothing seems to get done about it and some (like NRE) will continually insist they are right, even when presented with evidence they are not.