$79 Out of Warranty Battery Replacement Not Honored

Thanks, yes. I have been doing some troubleshooting for the past 2 months, including writing down times and percentages, as I originally suspected a software update or bluetooth issue. I actually removed every third party app from the watch, tried with wifi off, heart monitoring off, and even raise to wake off to narrow it down. I then did a complete erase all settings on the watch with defaults. Both the watch and iPhone received updates since I started this process which didn't improve the battery life.

As of last week, as a last ditched effort, I did a complete erase all settings again on the watch, but also on the phone. A huge pain and time consumer, but that's why I feel confident I just need a replacement battery in the watch at this point. I told Apple all of this already in my support incident.

I would consider third party options, but they cut the glue, so you then loose its water resistance and it doesn't seem like there are many reputable options from my searches.

Here are the options I am considering:

1. Sell the watch on eBay or similar and honestly disclaim the poor battery life (even though Apple diagnostics disagree).
2. Pay the higher service fee (three hundred something fee) and Apple will then replace it.
3. Just buy a new watch and throw this one away (cheaper than #2).
4. Keep using the watch and hope the battery dips below 80 soon so I can try again to ask Apple let me pay them to replace it.
5. Spend more time and energy on trying to get Apple to let me pay them $79 for a battery replacement now (in progress).

Thanks, I will try the advanced diagnostics. They did run and I sent them for both the phone and watch during our session but it sounds like there must be another level of diagnostics.

I understand the landfill waste issue, but I would argue that the watch is not useful if you can't make it past 5pm and they did offer to replace the entire watch at a price that was higher than buying a new one under their out of warranty service, so I don't think paying to replace the battery would be more wasteful.