I have a feeling I must have made a mistake when cleaning my 3rd-generation AirPods, or maybe I got them wet at some point, and this caused their output volume to be dramatically reduced.

I didn't notice immediately, but in this past month I've noticed that, even at full volume, I can barely hear spoken word audio. I have an older paid of AirPods Pro that I now use instead most of the time.

Can anyone comment on what may have happened? Also, what recourse I have? I've been thinking that I'll just replace these with the latest-generation AirPods, once those are released, but I'm worried that the same problem may eventually occur.