My 2 roommates and I (all students) were renting an apartment in a community in Dallas, Texas. Among many problems with the landlord, when we were leaving, we spent a full week fully cleaning the apartment. While we were expecting our security deposits back, they seized the deposit ($200), and not only that, surprisingly they also billed us $2000 back with fake reasons just to rob money from us, for things like a single seed in a corner, a small seed in the freezer, the apartment smells of food, etc. We didn't even cook any food for the last 2 months! They didn't do the pest control properly, and we suffered from cockroaches (and they are charging us for that!!). They also charged us for things that landlords must do anyways, like carpet washing. One thought is that they are charging us for maintenance costs (our AC was broken and they replaced it).
How can we dispute this? They are threatening to damage our credit report if we don't pay (a good trick to scare students). But is it that easy for someone to just report to the credit company and damage other people's score? They already took our deposit, and we don't believe we need to pay for fake expenses AT ALL and STRONGLY stand on our position. Shall we file a lawsuit?