Train ticket nonsense

I've only got today and tomorrow left at work this week and (annoyingly) my train ticket ran out yesterday, so this morning we left the house a little early in order to make sure I was at the front of the queue (not having anything like this happen again if I can help it), when I finished my little walk from the main road where Flyingpops drops me off, the ticket lady was just setting off to do her rounds with a bin bag to pick up all the coffee cups and discarded drink cans, which takes her a while as the platforms are quite long, so I thought I would try my luck with the ticket machine at the front of the station...now, to put this is context, my usual weekly ticket costs about £50 (with my new super sneaky route) but the cheapest ticket possible to purchase from the machine (I spent a while poking around the various options) was a daily zone 2-6 travel card priced at £22...if that were right it would mean my travel today and tomorrow would set me back £44, or only £6 cheaper than what I normally cough up for *seven* days fare, which made me frown quite hard, so I thought I would be patient and query it at the ticket office...

After a bit of experimentation (once she had finished doing all the sweeping up), it turned out that there was a cheaper option, but one that wasn't available on the public ticket machine (bit naughty that), if I opted for two daily returns to Coulsdon South (£6.50 each) and then bought two anytime Day Travelcards from Coulsdon to London zones 2-6 (£9 each) then it would work out costing £31 in total (or £15.50 per day) - better but still a bit of a hike from my usual daily rail fare (which works out around) £7.14 (when you take the weekend into account)...

So not a total fail on my part, but I honestly think it's a bit of a con - shouldn't there (arguably) be a button on the machine to calculate the best value tickets for the journey (it shouldn't be that difficult to code up), I think it's just slightly immoral to only present you with the most expensive option for each journey, I bet most people just blindly push the button and never even think twice about it...