You know that old chestnut about something that’s too good to be true? That it probably isn’t true? Well, this might be one of those times – unless you can act really, really fast.

Gadling first published an article the other day with a fare alert for cheap fall flights to Hawaii from New York and LA. The article had step-by-step instructions on how to score the super-low deals (the Gadling article said they’d found some deals for under $300 total). Then someone at the LA Times decided to try it out – and at first, came up with nothing close to the $300-ish fares that had been mentioned. The LA Times writer eventually found one ticket for a short September trip from LA to Hawaii for $350, which is still an excellent deal.

So, what’s the lesson here? As the LA Times points out, just because something sounds too good be true doesn’t mean it’s not true – it just means that you’ve got to act fast in order to make the promise become reality. Especially when deals like this are posted on well-read travel blogs and websites, their shelf-life is even shorter. So when you see an unbeatable deal, as the LA Times says, “you have to drop everything, spend some time with the search engines and reel it in.”

For more information on the Hawaii fare deal, check out the Gadling post for the instructions and the LA Times post for that writer’s experience. And good luck!