Microphone on watch (gen 3) not working

Hello, So the microphone on my watch stopped working. I noticed it 4 days ago when I tried to answer an incoming call but the person who dialed me could not hear me. I then tried to respond to a text message via dictation and it’s not capturing my voice. The mic symbol is on and the sound bars fluctuate with my voice. However, when I hit “send” I get an error message that dictation failed.

I’ve updated my phone and my watch. I’ve turned them both off/on several times. I’ve toggled enable dictation on/off on phone several times. I never use Siri and have always had all Siri settings off. I’ve cleaned with a soft brush.

My watch is only 16 months old. What is even more frustrating is that a week before the mic stopped working, my watch started incorrectly logging hundreds of flights of stairs climbed. Like hundreds a day. Really, Apple? I’m recovering from knee surgery and barely getting 1000 steps a day.

Knowing what we know now about apple purposefully designing products to stop working so we upgrade makes me feel like an idiot for spending any more money with them. If my watch is only good for telling time then I’m over it.