Landlord won't return security deposit. She's saying that this is normal, using her children's experiences with security deposit

Old location: Pasadena, CA | New location: San Jose, CA

Hello.

There's actually way more to this, but we're in the middle of trying to determine the dispute of the security deposit, but I'm very close to taking this to small claims court.

Very brief background:

• Me and my mother alone lived in this particular unit for 3 years

• During the initial inspection, the landlord told us everything looked good and clean. We thought that was going to be it. Then upon another "reinspection" without our presence (where I was in my new location, but I allowed, which was very stupid of me)

• Once we moved, we were given a $1000+ bill for damages we were not responsible for (mainly water leaks that were never visibly present while we were there and bunch of cleaning fees).

• I counter argued, telling her that she couldn't charge me for regular cleaning of rooms because we cleaned it thoroughly before we left, unless there had been an unacceptable damage (there was none left), then she raised the price to $1300+ with a new itemized list less than 24 hours—charging other things that was not mentioned earlier during the initial inspection. This was when I got really heated.

• I managed to calm down and approached this rationally, and she brought the charge down to $680.

• After a dispute with my mom with the landlord (I begged her not to), she's upset now, so she's threatening us in sending us a check for $450 (remaining after 1300+ deduction) in the mailbox. I've never experienced anything like this in my life.

But after realizing that she's including charges that should not have been made, I'm willing to give them nothing, because I am beginning to question the legitimacy of this list. They were clearly manipulating us at this point, them knowing that we were 6 hours away from the old address.

Now she is using anecdotal experience to dissuade us from pursuing the security deposit. Here's the conversation (since I cannot upload image here.)

... My old son and his girlfriend rented apartment 3 times, and each time he got back only 1/10th of the deposit, almost nothing! No choice! I'm not happy with that, so I won't [do that to you]! Thank you for your help.

During our residency over 3 different places, we managed to get a full amount of our security deposit back, except this one.

What can I do? I'm 6 hours away and I feel that this landlord is manipulating me into paying the security deposit which I'm NOT willing to do! Thank you.

This was meant to be a cross-post from another subreddit but I couldn't get it to work. My apologies.