Originally Posted by rankourabu

Excellent advice - just pay the cancellation fee - you will get the hundreds of dollars you paid back, as well as your point.

Try to find YYJ-SFO-LHR on UA, or even better YYJ-SFO-LAX-LHR, last leg on NZ. Any transatlantic on Air Canada/Lufthansa will cost you $800 in fees, and those may have gone up siginficantly since you bought your ticket, so not only will you get dinged with change fee, but hundreds of dollars more in scamcharges.