VentureForth

I recently gave up my seat on a flight from San Francisco to Albuquerque in exchange for a free flight anywhere in the US voucher. As I've been travelling a lot, my voucher was in my laptop bag and the very next day, my family and I were travelling again to Savannah, GA. While in Savannah, my wife was cleaning up my stuff and thought that it was an old boarding pass receipt and threw it away.

I called United and they said that my Feb flight couldn't pull up the voucher in the system yet, but when they could the only thing they could offer me would be $175 voucher - a far cry from the true value of the voucher.

$175 is better than 6 hours in the office, but I really was looking forward to using this voucher after getting a new job to visit home. They seem unwilling to yeild. I would suppose that my MileagePlus would actually show the voucher number in my history. I suppose their reasoning is that since the vouchers are transferable, then it is at risk that they offer a replacement. But I know it's gone for good and that it won't ever be issued.

Can anyone suggest a tactic to encourage United to give me back the full value of the voucher?

Thanks!
Jim