Airpods microphone not working

Having trouble reaching Apple support. Please help. Airpods (2nd gen) only few months old - worked perfectly until last week - all of a sudden microphones stopped working correctly. When on phone using airpods no one can hear me ... if I yell sometimes they Think they hear me but sounds from great distance & not desirable at all. I can hear fine btw.

*so far - tried carefully cleaning them, canceling them off Bluetooth then rebooting, updating iPhone software, and switching microphones from auto to diff ears.

thanks.