Well, it's a defect arising from there basically being three different types of physical ticket, the various colour ones from the staff-operated ticket machines, the orange and white ones from TVMs, and the bluish ones which are prebooked and have reserved seats etc. The staff machines can issue tickets in 30-45 seconds (faster if you happen to buy one of the tickets on their 9 preset buttons) whereas it takes 3-4 minutes to issue the bookings. It's not entirely unreasonable to give people a break on fares when they have to commit to a certain train and don't use staff time putting in the booking.
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