Learn English – When is the present perfect tense used instead of the past tense

I think, in formal usage, you will find that American and British are basically identical. We each use both of those constructions in the appropriate situation. Obviously, there is a semantic difference between these two constructions and neither dialect exclusively uses one or the other.

I am not certain, but I think what you are referring to is the fact that American English speakers can sometimes use simple past in places where one normally uses present perfect. So, as a US English speaker, I would correctly say:

(1) I've never gone to a tennis match before, but I am going to one today.

But, sometimes I say:

(2) I never went to a tennis match before, but I am going to one today.

I would not say that this second example is standard US English — in any formal situation I would use the present perfect. But, I suspect it is common in speech and I do it quite often.

This could be the very beginning of a semantic shift in the present perfect construction in English. Perhaps (2) will be preferred in several hundred years. (Such things are not unheard of; German now uses the present perfect form to indicate simple past in speech.)

If a non-native speaker asked me about this, I would never recommend to use the construction in (2), because (1) is right in every situation and never sounds strange or formal.

As an American English speaker, all four examples seem correct.

The past perfect often seems to be used in American English to avoid confusion about the relationship between two past events. Where such confusion is impossible, the simple past is often used.

"I had typed ten pages when he returned." indicates typing before returning. "I typed ten pages when he returned." implies that returning is simultaneous or even before the typing.

In your examples, "by the time" serves this temporal ordering purpose, so the choice of verb tense is unnecessary.