Due to unexpected circumstances, I have to fly to Los Angeles the next day. I am by no means a frequent business traveler. I have always used Southwest Airline to travel from Northern California to Southern California because of their prices. So I go to Southwest website to check their list of available flights, and I was shocked to find out that each flight is priced $124. The total for the roundtrip including taxes and fees is a whopping $269. What happened to their often advertised $49 one-way fare? Apparently, those low fares must be booked certain days in advance (usually 14 days). I also searched other sites such as Orbitz, Travelocity, Expedia, everything except Priceline. Finally, I gave up looking and decided to pay $269 for the Southwest flight. I was going through the checkout process then I saw a section called “Apply Travel Funds”. Afte geographic tongue r a little bit of research on Southwest website, I learned that you can apply credits from previous unused ticket on your next reservation. Then it hits me, there must be people out there who might be willing to sell these credits at reduced prices before they expire. But where would I find these people? A quick goolge of “southwest travel fund” returns two obvious places: Ebay and Craiglist. The first place I tried is Ebay. Do a search on “Southwest credit” and BINGO! There are several auctions where people are selling their expiring credits at discounted prices. After a quick scan, I picked up one auction where the original credit amount is $250, but the seller is selling it for $200 Buy-It-Now. That’s a 20% saving! Like every careful ebay user, I verified the seller’s feedbacks and past auctions. I made sure that there are no other hidden charges.