Messy Apartment Situation

Location: Texas

Tldr: Messy apartment situation over only about $850 worth of deposit plus over charged rent, but the complex has admitted in writing that they made the mistakes and I feel like we have a strong case. But is it worth the effort to collect?

Ok, so my wife and I have been living in a 640sqft "luxury" apartment for the past year (the standard TAA lease agreement).

About a week or half week before our lease was going to expire/auto-renew we requested a new lease agreement (original lease $940/mo, auto renewal $1100/mo, new lease $970/mo) through the portal. Well they didn't get it to us the first two days, so we went up to the office multiple times the following days.

They said they wouldn't be able to get us the lease agreement before the expiration of our lease, but we were able to get the front office associate to give us in writing that they would give us the rate of $970/mo backdated to before the expiration, and that none of this was our fault.

We go back multiple times the next week and they still don't have it.

Finally they get back to us about a week later and say that they made a mistake and miss allocated our $400 refundable deposit, and that our only options would be to repay the deposit or accept a $0 deposit on the new lease agreement.

We respond via email that this is unacceptable and that they will have to fix the problem on their end and give us the $400 on our lease agreement or else give us a $400 discount credit towards a month of rent, whatever is easier for them.

Another week goes by and they respond with a copy of our ledger, again admitting that it's their fault. It appears that they credited our $400 deposit towards our second month of rent, and then there is an additional $500 credit that was given to us for unknown reasons.

Now this was very confusing and frustrating for us because we didn't know what our legal right are in this situation, and so we took our time responding.

Well 7days later the property manager calls on a recorded line. She asks if we've seen the emails, to which I say that I'm currently drafting the response. She asks how we're going to respond, and I respond that it will be in the email. And she asks when we're going to send it, to which I say within 24hrs. She responded very rudely that 24hrs is too long and that we need to try and get it to them sooner, to which I responded that we were still within the 7days that it took them to respond the last time.

Well the next morning we're about to send the response email, when we notice they assessed an additional $160 rent charge to our account, meaning that they had started charging us the auto-renew $1100 rate effectively.

Our response was effectively that they needed to return our deposit in some way. We really didn't address their claim about our deposit being put towards our rent because we still don't understand what happened there and we don't want to say anything to jeperdize the deposit claim.

Then after/separately, paid the additional $160 rent charge and sent a followup email saying we were paying in protest to avoid any issues/fees but that we reserved all rights.

Well at this point we found the situation stressful and about 5days later decided that we couldn't keep living here paying the higher rate with no foreseeable end.

So we sent a 60 day termination letter effectively stating that we couldn't keep paying the higher rate indefinitely, and that this termination wasn't our fault they forced it through their actions. We also stated that this decision was final because we we didn't want to pay apartment applications fees at another complex just for our managers to come back with a lease agreement, and then we're out the extra $400 application fee. Plus we just don't want to live here now.

We also included a 5day deadline for responding to our termination and they're about to pass that deadline.

I have a feeling the only way we'll get any money from this is with a civil small claims filing.

But my question is whether it's worth it? Would we actually get a payout, how much and how much time/effort will this take?

Keep in mind I'm not a lawyer just someone who knows how to use AI for advice.