I reached out to Apple Customer Service about this, two nights ago. They informed me that their “contact” at Apple is fully aware of this issue (and this form) and that a bug fix will be happening with a future OS update… “eventually”.
When I tried to get them to commit to a estimated timeline (like having this fixed by US Thanksgiving - Nov 23rd?) they just repeated that it will get fixed “eventually”.
So yeah, Apple knows (and does not care) that one of their core, basic features for Apple Watch, isn’t working.
Customer Service told me their “contact” advised that I try the “Modular” watch face as a temporary work-around. I replied that I had tried that, and it wasn't working. They said, “Oh, I will take note of that” as a lame reply.
It was at this point that I told customer service that I had been genuinely considering trading in my Apple Watch 6 for a new Watch 9 (I legitimately had the Watch 9 and Trade-In in my checkout cart on Apple Store app). However, I was not keen to go purchase a $500 watch that has one of its main features, already broken at time of purchase.
The customer service rep advised me to “trade in the Watch to get the value for it”.
So it looks like I will trade in my Watch 6 … for an Apple Store gift card.
I will likely look at a much less expensive FitBit “Charge 6” Watch, instead. At least they show the heart rate consistently (🙄) and they have a 7 day battery life, and have way more features (like blood glucose monitoring and temperature alerts).
In future, I may reconsider and get another Apple watch… if Apple can stop breaking core features with basic software updates and then having a lackadaisical approach of taking weeks to months to fix the errors they caused to begin with! 😡
I am a longtime loyal Apple customer and have spent literally thousands of dollars in Apple products over the years. These type of lazy responses to fixing self-inflected functionality errors are certainly not encouraging me to remain loyal if “we will get around to it, eventually” is the only response from Apple on this.
Yeah, “I will get to it… eventually” is the same “timeline” my ex gave for fixing my broken kitchen faucet (for 3 months)… guess who got a new faucet (and boyfriend)? 🙋🏼♀️