United flight cancellation screw up ... suggestions?

OK here's the situation:

Wife (Gold MP) called United MP line about 3 days prior to her flight to ask about canceling. She specifically asked the agent if she were to cancel her flight, would there be any fees to cancel or fees to rebook it for a later flight. The agent informed her that there would be no fees, and that she could use the fare towards any other flight in the US. So she cancelled.

Fast forward to today, wife calls back to book a new flight. Previous one was LAS>SFO, new one was to be SFO>LAS. New agent informs her that there will be a $200 fee and she cannot change the start/end points from the original. After an hour of arguing back and forth explaining that the other agent misinformed, we get the UA agent to book a new LAS>SFO flight with no fee. However, this is not really desirable for our travel plans and we would rather have gotten a refund.

Any suggestions on alternate steps we could take with UA to resolve this? We asked them about going to review the tape recordings but it seems like a long process.