I flew SAT -> EWR this monday (Jan 20th) and spent $8 to purchase Wi-Fi for the flight. I had issues throughout the flight and had many intermittent periods of usable service. I made a mental note to request a refund.

Last night around 27 hours after the flight landed I received an email with the subject line "Your United purchase is being refunded" and it was an email automatically refunding my $8 Wi-Fi purchase.

So props to United on both employing some form of monitoring/telematics to detect that the flight had unreliable Wi-Fi, and offering the refund proactively/automatically rather than making the customer contact United for a refund.