FYI to those of you flying to Hawaii between Nov, 09 & March, 2010...Alaska Airlines has a terrific sale right now! I just got 2 RT tickets nonstop from OAK to KOA for $718.40!!!
I think that's a great price!

Yeah, that's a pretty good price right now but keep checking because as your flight date gets closer sometimes they have an even better sale and then you can get a refund for the difference. Last year I had a ticket from Kansas to Hawaii for $925 and 2 months later United dropped the price to $425! They gave me a $600 refund.
A site that can automatically track future drops in your fare and email you when it drops is Yapta.com.

montereybob,

your advice is only partially correct. United charges $150.00 to issue a refund on non-refundable domestic tickets. International varies according to fare rules. The ONLY time you can get a full refund is if you had a fully refundable ticket.

In your case it will be $500 difference - $150 Fee = $350 refund

So, while it's still a nice refund it's not the full amount. The following refund rules are quoted from www.UA.com

If I have purchased a ticket and a new, lower fare is introduced, can I obtain a credit?

When we introduce new fares or reduce current fares in a particular market, you may change a previously purchased ticket (purchased on or after March 20, 2009) to the new fare if:

the change is made prior to departure;
you do not change the flight, date, origin, destination or stopover points;
reservations are confirmed in an appropriate class of service;
all fare rules are met; and
the lower fare is not a united.com-only fare.
To change your ticket to the new fare, you may request a credit voucher (for a nonrefundable ticket) or a refund (for a refundable ticket) through the My Itineraries page at united.com or by calling United Reservations at 1-800-UNITED-1 (1-800-864-8331). A $150.00 administrative fee will be assessed for domestic (U.S./Canada) tickets. Fees vary for international tickets. Any applicable penalties are retroactive to the new fare ticket.

bob, some but not all airlines will give you a refund if the fare drops, but the rules have changed, at least for United. You have to pay a change fee, so the drop has to be substantial for it to be worth it (of course, your's was).

btw, I'm not saying that you didn't get a full refund, all I'm saying is that from now on the rules have changed so I thought I post the needed correction.

Thanks for the correction. I got my full refund before United put in place their lousy $150 refund fee. I wonder if they did this because Yapta.com was becoming so successful at tracking people's refunds that United was losing larger amounts of money from this process. At any rate, if the whole thing can work for you and your airline (including fees), it is still worth checking for dropped rates. Maybe someone can advise us which airlines allow for dropped rate refunds besides United.

I believe all domestic airlines do allow refunds and in fact Southwest does not charge to reissue the ticket so you do get a full refund with SW.

Your refund was exceptionally large. Usually the fare differences are not that big. $100-200 is probably the average for domestic flights, so in most cases the refund is not even worth the trouble anymore and in some cases you would need to pay the airline just to get the "refund"

Yes, I was lucky. In fact, I exchanged 2 tix for a total of $1200 refund/vouchers which I just redeemed for a trip to Montreal and Quebec City for me and my wife----and because those tickets went on sale just yesterday, I still have $260 worth of vouchers left, plus 2 more $100 vouchers they gave us because of a flight overbooking on a previous trip.
So I will never give up looking for fare sales. Hope springs eternal. And they can come at the most unexpected times---so it really is worth the effort to keep checking, at least for me.