I had to reschedule my BOS-FCO flight (60k + $11.20 in fees for two one-way main cabin tickets). I was hoping to avoid paying a change fee because the original booking fees were less than $50 and others have reported that canceling a flight in this situation leads to no fees. However I just got off the phone to make the change and Virgin Atlantic asked for my CC and charged $50 per ticket to change the flight, for a total of $100.

So, my question is: should I have canceled the flight and then simply re-booked it?

If canceling is no fee, this would have saved me $100. I considered this in the moment but chickened out since I was not sure if the award points would be immediately returned to me and don't like the idea of not having a seat temporarily in between canceling and booking.