OP,

I suggest you write to Customer Service. I was in a similar situation not too long ago - I was traveling on another airline and had purchased a ticket on AirTran the following day. However, my original flight was cancelled due to a maintenance issue, so I had to wait for 24 hours to get on another flight to the US (I was in Europe at the time). Because of that, I ended up missing the AirTran flight. I had booked a non-refundable ticket (I think most of AirTran's are except Business), so I knew there was nothing I could have done to salvage the value of that ticket even though it wasn't really my fault but I wrote Customer Service anyway. I pointed out the obvious and expressed regret that after the purchase by Southwest they still haven't adopted their No Change Fees policy and several days later, I received a response providing a credit for the amount paid. So, the moral of the story is write to Customer Service - you may get a sympathetic CSR who will take care of these fees - you never know until you try. Good Luck!