OP here, we persevered and was given a gift card for $47.95 (the difference in what we should have saved the first time). Yay!
Dh and I went to downtown Disney today and spoke with a wonderful CM there at guest relations. Whe was very understanding and even though we didn't have the 7 day MYW ticker from UT any longer, she looked up in their system and was able to figure out what to do.
She very pleasantly explained what may have happened and apologized for the inconvenience. She said that using another ticket to renew an AP actually is a red flag and that some people do try to scam the system. Not sure how they do it, but it's something that happens. She was very nice and very helpful.
Thank you all for your advice and for thinking of doing this...it does work, just have all your ducks in a row and have the CM actually talk to you about what they're doing so you can stop them if you know it's wrong.