In message , at 10:14:40 on Mon, 30
Jun 2014, tim..... remarked:

However, when I buy tickets ahead of time, it's always for a
specific day. How would this "buying order" rule work if I bought a
ticket for the end of August today, and a ticket for early August
tomorrow?

Exactly.

In other news, I see they say you can only buy one ticket per day
[online]. So bad luck if you want to buy one for late August, and
another for early August, the same day.

Again useless

This is a back end problem. If they have decided that they can't solve
if for this electronic ticketing type they won't be able to solve it
for any electronic ticketing type

OTOH it could just be a step on the road to tne final solution, that
isn't broken.

The issue here is when the passenger has ambiguous stored tickets. In
fact, if I buy an AP-ticket for the end of August, and one for the start
of August, it's much less ambiguous which one I want to use, because
they have a date associated with them.

For other situations, like the one I had yesterday[1], you can
disambiguate some of them by waiting until the journey finishes before
deciding.

Although that has other problems like I didn't get off and back on the
train home at Cambridge, so wouldn't be able to touch-out the return
half from London and touch-in the single to Ely. In fact most "Break of
Journey" situations and "split ticketing" stop working as soon as you go
'paperless'

[1] Bought tickets at Cambridge for both London and Ely, intending to
travel Cambridge-London-Cambridge-Ely.

ps The barriers at Cambridge were working at 7am, but the Liverpool St
ones were locked out on arrival, as were the Kings Cross ones when I
came back mid-afternoon.
--
Roland Perry