I ran into this on AA once when I wanted to take a red-eye to ORD instead of a 6:30 am departure. Since the red-eye to ORD was leaving at 23:xx, it wasn't the same day, and the first agent I spoke to declined to put our party on the list. The DFW flight would have qualified as it left at 00:xx, but that would have required a reroute, which they frown upon. This was all well before the kiosk or OLCI giving you the option to pay to confirm an alternate flight.

However, we hung around the gate and the agent actually controlling the boarding gave us seats and we were off.

The connecting flight was no problem, as it was the same calendar day. Net was we arrived about 7 hours earlier.

I think most of these policies restricting standby for earlier flights are stupid. If the seats are going out empty, why not let people take them? The future seats can go back into inventory and possibly be sold or used to accommodate an irregular op situation. The empty seats about to depart are lost forever. I would have no problem being at the very bottom of any standby list in this situation, but it seems dumb to flat out deny standby.

I should add that one of the last times I flew WN, they refused to let two of us standby for a flight one hour before our ticketed flight. Granted, our ticket was endorsed no standby, so we were not entirely surprised. The kicker was that they then came aboard our ticketed flight and asked for two volunteers for a $200 voucher because it was oversold. Imagine how we felt....