Carers allowance - 12 weeks to process claim?

Hello everyone, I applied for carers allowance in early September, its now been nearly 12 weeks and nothing. They acknowledged all the paperwork sent and an email which said i should hear back in 6 weeks. The phoneline is open 4 hours a day and i’ve spent over an hour so far trying to get through to them to see what is happening. There seems to be no online system available to see where the claim is at - it would save me time calling and save their phoneline from being constantly engaged if people had online access regarding claim process. It appears they also don’t have an email address. Short of writing to them like its the 1990s, what else can I do here? How long are people reasonably expected to wait? Has anyone else applied at a similar time and still waiting?