Travel insurance pains

daljure

Please some ideas:

I bought a year travel insurance cover for my family from Marks & Spencer, essentially to cover for our summer holiday trip to South America. In order to get there we had to make a connecting flight in Atlanta (USA), however our flight out of London was delayed 3 hours (bad weather) and, therefore we missed our flight out of Atlanta. In the end we had to spend 4 nights in Atlanta before they could get us seats to our final destination.
On our return to the UK I made the claim for the expenses for those 4 nights to Marks & Spencer but they declined it because the initial delay had been less than 12 hours & because they don't cover missed connection flights (not outside the UK anyway).
I personally think that the idea of getting travel insurance is to cover for all these unexpected events, but again, it seems that the big players get their way by means of interpretation of the small print.

That said, firstly, I'd be very thankful if anybody can tell me whether I have any basis to make a claim anywhere.
And, secondly, if there is an insurance provider that does not exclude these events, so I can get it in the future.

P.S: Delta Airlines, our carrier eschewed liability (i.e. didn't offer any compensation at all) because the reason of the delay -bad weather- was out of their hands.

Thanks

D