My wife and I are booked for round trip travel on United from San Francisco to Orlando in Sept/Oct of 2013. I did not pay close enough attention when the e-tickets were issued, and the return date is wrong; we were to return on October 10th, not the 9th as ticketed.

Contacting the ticketing folks, I was informed that it would cost $150 per ticket to correct this screw-up. Really? A 20% charge for the wrong return date, for a flight almost a year out? Aside from paying $300 or changing our hotel and car reservations, can anything be done?

Any suggestions appreciated...

That's the change fee for a ticket. Most airlines have them. Live & learn - always double check details.

Hope for a schedule change between now and then, which will allow you to change free. Or keep checking prices. They may reduce the fare to the point where paying the $150 "plus" the fare difference may net a refund of a small amount.

Sign-up for daily price notifications with Kayak or other web-sites. The price of your tickets may actually go down in the next few months. Change your flight when the prices drop. This will help mitigate the pain of the change fees.

I like keloutwest's approach above.

and when the client screws up and calls a meeting for the wrong day or on the wrong coast, do you forgive him, and waive all fees?

1. To answer OP's direct question, he apparently bought a discounted penalty ticket for which he pays an agreed upon penalty of $150 + fare difference for changes. He could have paid more money for the ticket and had no fees for changes. On this one occasion, he's learned a valuable lesson. Over a lifetime, he will save a lot more sticking with the discounted tickets and checking e-tickets carefully within the 24-hour window.

2. As to when to change, it's a very real crap shoot. Nobody on FT can predict what airfares will be in the next year. Even the oil futures guys are flummoxed. If fares go up, OP will be stuck with the $150 per person + the fare difference. If they go down, he will be stuck with $150 less the fare drop. If there is a significant change in schedule, he can likely get a free change, but that may or may not happen. Additionally, even if prices drop, there is nothing to suggest that his particular fare bucket will be available.

3. It may also be worth looking at other carriers over time or some super cheap fare sale where OP simply abandons his existing ticket and buys new ones for less than the $150+fare difference.

4. There are risks with every strategy.

The OP might be able to get an exception if he is a high tier elite with UA as a courtesy. I'm assuming that the ticket was purchased more than 24 hours ago if UA has this policy rather than allowing holds. (One or the other must apply to a USA domestic ticket.) Otherwise the options are as people have suggested above, although abandoning the tickets and taking another carrier should still give a UA credit for the fare minus the $150 change fee toward another UA ticket within a year.

If the OP was an Elite with UA there wouldn't be a change fee.

False: the OP doesn't seem to have award tickets as he states that the $150 change fee is 20% of the ticket price. Your statement is true only for award tickets and depends on the elite tier; IIRC Premium Silver wouldn't get change fees waived for award tickets for instance.

If it's a "revenue" ticket, most/all U.S. carriers allow a free change or cancellation within 24 hours of booking. That one-day window is the last "free" time to troubleshoot dates and times on a non-refundable/changeable ticket.

If it's a US domestic carrier, US law requires a free cancellation or hold for 24 hours from time of booking. UA uses the book & cancel option.

If you bought your ticket with the airline's credit card and have used that credit card a lot you might have some success. We also had to change a return date. My husband called the airline and very, very politely said that we were owners of the airline's credit card, have spent mucho $ on this card, bought the ticket with this card, needed to make that return change.... anyway possible we could be given a break with the change fee?

They were very nice and said they would not charge us the change fee and we only had to pay the fare difference which was $9.

Maybe, if you're a airline card holder, you could give it a try?

Extremely unusual. Good for you, but that's very rare.

The 24 hour rule saved my butt a few times when I put in the date regular style (i.e. non US style) and had tickets for the wrong months.