Great Western Coffee Shop

If I work a shift from 08:00 to 16:00 near Swindon station, I pay a £9.90 fare to get there and back
If I work a shift from 11:00 to 19:00 near Swindon station, I pay a £7.40 fare to get there and back
If I work a shift from 21:00 to 05:00 near Swindon station, I pay a £15.30 fare to get there and back

Shouldn't day return tickets be valid for a day - 24 hours from time of issue or first use?

Input thought for fare consultation.

In Kernowland it used to be midnight to midnight.  So a shift starting later say Friday evening, that ticket would expire that same day at 23h59.  Return home early Saturday morning is a new day, so a new ticket required please.
All sorts of problems doing a 24 hour validity from, say 17h00 one day to 17h00 the next day.  Problems as in working out whether the ticket time is more or less than 24 hours - especially when the driver is busy.
Could the new Ticketer machines do this? Perhaps so.  Guess they would need a software update/change.

Working out whether the ticket time is more or less than 24 hrs? Surely it's not that difficult, even for the Cornish? 😉

I've experienced higher fares too usually between something like midnight and 6am on my way to or from Gatwick. Those times are not peak and trains lightly loaded so I don't see why peak fares are charged. It would make more sense for peak fares to start from approx 7am to approx 9.30am which is when the trains would normally expected to be a lot busier.

It rather depends on the answer to "what are peak fares for?"
- To discourage overcrowding?
- To maximise the railway's income?
- To generate more revenue from trains at times they are expensive to run?

Each of the three answers gives you a different fare regime. I suspect that the real answer is a bit of a combination of the first two.

No, it's number 2, in order to satisfy the primary aim of any business. It is in GWR's interest to run fewer, and more packed trains as this increases their revenue and reduces their cost. They know that more people have no choice but to travel during peak hours, and so prices rise in response to relatively inelastic demand.

There is a small saving to be made if you work regular nights.   Many Royal Mail workers at Swindon who work, say, Sunday night through to Thursday night buy a single on the bus to go to work on Sunday night and then buy a day return on Monday morning to go home before using the return portion to go back to work Monday night.   They do that all week until buying a single to get home Friday morning.

Is it possible to get an "off peak" season ticket from GWR?

I did night shifts (generally 8pm to 8am) for around 10 years and this was a common frustration but only one of many.

The ticket office was often closed so you had to rely of the machines which 25 years ago weren't great; there was a reduced service as you were going against the general direction of travel and there were no 'fast' trains so my commute took much longer. It could also be challenging to remember the buy a ticket home after working a 12 hour night shift as doing anything was a struggle.

The plus side was it was generally a better journey as less crowded.

As we normally did a pattern of 3 on 3 off the maths of a season ticket never quite stacked up although occasionally I went down this route for the sake of convenience.

Working out whether the ticket time is more or less than 24 hrs? Surely it's not that difficult, even for the Cornish? 😉
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As a Cornishman, I take your comment as being offensive and unnecessary given the context.  I invite you to apologise to the forum.

As a Cornishman, I take your comment as being offensive and unnecessary given the context.  I invite you to apologise to the forum.
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As a Plymothian, who spent most of the first dozen years of his life living in West Cornwall, and to this day regularly engages in similar banter with friends on both sides of the Tamar I must politely decline your invitation, if only because you do not speak for the entire forum.

I regret I hurt your feelings, which are clearly a great deal more delicate than those of most Cornishmen that I know.

(and by the way - cream on first before jam!)

Working out whether the ticket time is more or less than 24 hrs? Surely it's not that difficult, even for the Cornish? 😉
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Quite used to such insinuations!  Passengers purchase tickets at totally different minute intervals throughout the day, so every ticket will have a different issue time.
The date and time the ticket was issued is not a bold clear highlight time, so a driver would need to visually look at every ticket presented at boarding and manually work out the time difference.  A late running bus (as most are); perhaps 20 passengers queuing (many more at some stops) would delay the bus to unmanageable levels.  Passenger ticket tampering could easily occur as well.  A ticket inspector would spot that and of course, the driver would get reported for not spotting that.
It would need to be done electronically so the return section could be auto scanned.
Hence, if the Ticketer was programmed for that, then yes, it could be done.
Last winter, return tickets were valid up to 5 days, but no longer.

If we're talking about buses, the answer is to move to an oyster-style or smart card system. This would also have the benefit of reducing dwell times (and, in dodgy areas, removing the admittedly very small risk of the driver being mugged – because there would no longer be cash involved).

For trains this would require either barriers and therefore manning at every station or some sort of validator machine in each and every carriage. The former would be way too expensive and the latter would be inconvenient for all sorts of reasons in the trains (and probably also too expensive!).

As a cornish man I’m glad I saw it as a bit of banter. Got to remember not veryone has a sense of humour in this day and age!