One of the difficult decisions I rarely have to make is changing something that is seemingly set in stone.

It happened once when we got our vanity phone number. 254-5-CAT5TV is a pretty cool phone number for us. But for the first two seasons of my show, we had the old local number in the lower third. I feel bad for whoever ended up with that number and years later is still getting calls from Category5 viewers who are watching back episodes.

Now, we’ve been promoting our PO Box for years. We rent the box because we have to have a place to receive mail. Our hours of operation are not that of a regular business, so we can’t accept mail at the studio without risking having to constantly miss deliveries. But having promoted our PO Box for so long, I was really hesitant to ever change it.

Here’s are the facts. Our PO Box, with Canada Post, is way over-priced. $73 every 3 months. Almost $300 per year to be able to accept mail. They do not discount if you prepay for the year, and they only accept parcel deliveries from their own carriers. Shipping via UPS? Too bad, our Canada Post post office will reject it.

Well, our postal box is once again up for renewal, and with last year’s bills fresh in my mind having just completed our Category5 taxes for 2014, I really felt we were paying too much. I asked Canada Post if there was any way to reduce the fee. Take into account my years of being a faithful customer. We prepay every year, we pay on time every time, and we have the smallest box possible. Why are we paying $300 per year? They said there is nothing they can do, and in fact in my time with Canada Post, the price only ever goes up.

So, I made some calls.

Pak Mail is the one alternative in Barrie who really impressed me. Pak Mail offers mailboxes for $140 per year plus tax (plus refundable deposit). What? That’s about half what I’m paying! Okay, I’m already interested.

I called them up and turns out they have 24 hour access, and they accept courier deliveries from all courier companies! That means our DHL shipments from China can go directly to our mailbox at Pak Mail.

They’re able to achieve this because it’s not a “PO Box” per se. It’s a “Suite”. So our Suite at their street address is 166. It just makes sense.

They’ll even keep my credit card number on file so if there are any import fees, the bill gets paid and my package gets delivered (this happens almost every time we get a product from China to review).

Also, the woman who works there said they will email me if a parcel arrives. Excuse me? Canada Post be darned, I’m sold ten times over!

This is when I fist bumped her.

So with 2 weeks to go before our annual renewal of the PO Box, I decided to suck up the fact that some people will bounce mail (but I’m doing my best to let you know in advance while we have the 2 week overlap!) in order to save money and add better service to the mix. There’s nothing I can do about old videos that mention the old PO Box, but hopefully people know to go to our web site for current information.

Here’s our new address. Please send us your postcard today!

Category5 TV
336 Yonge Street, Suite 166
Barrie, Ontario
Canada L4N 4C8

-Robbie