If it wasn’t for flexing your communication muscles I doubt the distraction and time spent was worth 88USD.
Most reasonable would be to ditch after the first answer from the CEO. They will likely disappoint in the future.
The more the company stonewalls you, the more likely your bad faith claims are to be accepted by a court. Bad faith contract violations come with punitive damages that can make it worth your time to fight, and I imagine that the $88 he made on this dispute did not actually take him all that much time. Writing the blog post might have, but that seems more like a labor of love.