Linking MLB.TV with MLB Extra Innings

I know this is a completely different year, but it was impossible to link to MLB.TV last night (opening day for many teams this shortened season) associated with my MLB Extra Innings subscription. There were three reasons:

1.  I had an outstanding balance of $33 and change for the first month's payment for MLB Extra Innings.  I have auto pay and assumed

     any charges would be taken care of.  Not true, I had to pay for that separately and late.  As best I can tell from all my e-mails,

     DirecTV never notified me of this.

2.  Once I paid it, I needed to stream MLB.TV for the game I wanted as I am not at home where my DirecTV dish is installed.  When

     I tried to stream MLB.TV, it kept telling me I did not have a subscription.  After finally getting through to a live person at DirecTV

     he confirmed my MLB Extra Innings subscription had been paid for and was active as of last night and he could not determine

     why MLB.TV was not active for me.  He referred me to an MLB.TV "help" number.

3.  I waited over 40 minutes on the MLB.TV help number and gave up as the game was mostly over by then.  I also, while waiting,

     tried searching the MLB.TV website as to how I could activate my account.  The only way I could find was to pay a new separate 

     subscription fee which with an active MLB Extra Innings account I should not have to have done.

This morning I searched for a reason why my MLB.TV subscription was not reading active and discovered an "MLB authentication" site.  I filled it out with my MLB.TV account ID and password, was sent to a DirecTV link that had me enter my DirecTV ID and password, and

suddenly I was active for MLB.TV.

Why on God's Good Earth wasn't there something on DirecTV or MLB.TV that instructed me on the solution?  If this was something routine that has to be done every year, why have I not had to do this in past years?  If this was something new to COVID (like everything else in our lives), why wasn't there a notice about this either by e-mail or on one of the sites I tried visiting last night.  It's not an acceptable excuse that COVID has shaken things up for baseball also.  They've known for several weeks when the season was starting.  They could at least have posted some instructions on what to expect and what to do  - i.e. - separate payment for MLB Extra Innings, and need to log on to MLB.TV authentication site or have a link on the main MLB.TV webpage.

Bad.  Very bad.