Missing a Pearl

I have to say one of the biggest improvements in the London Transport over the last couple of years has been the Oyster card scheme, it makes using public transport in London very simple. I love the way it automatically stops charging you once the cost of your travel reaches the price of a daily travel card. 

The system though does have a few annoyances in the way it works. The biggest for me is Wimbledon station, if you don't already know this station is a interchange between rail, underground and tram.

I regularly travel through Wimbledon on my way to Croydon. I get the train from Ewell West using my train season ticket, then switch across to the tram platform and touch in with my oyster card.

Now this is usually where the problems begin, because I don't use my oyster card a lot I'm not always sure how much I have on it. This occasionally means when I touch in my card is short of credit. This is never normally a issue as when I get to the gate or touch in point and it indicates that I'm out of credit I can just  head to a ticket machine and top up. But at Wimbledon they have no way to top up oyster cards, not even via the ticket machine. Now if Wimbledon was just a train station I could understand, but it isn't it's also a tube station. The only way to top up an Oyster card at Wimbledon is to exit the station and find a newsagents that do Oyster top ups. I have to ask how TFL can possibly think this is acceptable,  the idea behind Oyster was to make life easier, well that is except for Wimbledon where it appears that the Oyster card scheme is missing a pearl.