We were flying from VCE to AUS on Monday Jun 3rd '24 all on a single Lufthansa ticket

Mon Jun 3 13:40 VCE LH 9457 14:45 Munich (MUC) - Air Dolomiti EN 8203
15:45 MUC LH 434 18:10 Chicago (ORD)
20:20 ORD LH 8680 23:07 Austin (AUS)

The Air Dolomiti flight departed late (almost an hour+) from VCE and we missed our connection to ORD. When we spoke to the Lufthansa agent in MUC who rebooked our flights, he looked at the delay codes for the Air Dolomiti flight and said the delays were not due to weather but operational issues (crew late; catering late etc). He said we had a right to claim compensation through the online Lufthansa form.

Lufthansa provided us overnight hotel accommodation, meal voucher and put us on a United flight next day... resulting in us arriving at the final destination 18 hrs after the planned arrival time.

We filled the Lufthansa claim form but got generic answer - we looked at your claim but we cannot provide compensation. No explanation as to why they cannot provide EU 261 compensation etc.

Any suggestions as to where we take it from here? soep? Or some other route?

And what compensation can we expect to get? 600 euro per person?

Thank you.