On March 23, 2021, Phil Bass, owner of The Doll House, a reputable sex doll store in the UK, made an important discovery regarding sex doll shipments via Fedex in the UK. One of his customer’s 165cm JY Doll was returned to China by Fedex as a prohibited item, but was not seized. Phil consulted a The Doll Forum (TDF) member named haremlover, who had successfully dealt to UK customs problems in the past, and according to haremlover’s contact at Fedex, sex dolls are now considered a restricted item by Fedex. Haremlover’s UK Fedex contact stated:
“After speaking with several of my colleagues in the Clearance team this afternoon to understand what the cause of these returns could be, I have been advised that whilst the importation of dolls is legal in to the UK, this commodity is prohibited by Fedex and the senders should not be using our service to send dolls to the UK, even if they are adult sized. If the paperwork is clear on what the contents are then the collecting driver should not be accepting the parcels, however unfortunately on occasions packages are collected without this being double checked.”
Upon visiting Fedex’s “Global shipping restrictions & prohibited items” page, Phil discovered that sex dolls, listed as “Life size, anatomically correct mannequins” are now prohibited by Fedex in the UK. After contacting Fedex, Phil received the following response by Ricky Palmer, GTS Clearance Specialist at Fedex (UK):
“Hi Phil. Unfortunately Pornography and/or obscene material, Manikins including sex dolls are listed on the FedEx prohibitions. This would mean that it is FedEx policy not to ship such items and no exceptions will be granted. The legality of these items is not relevant to our decision not to carry these types of goods and this is an internal decision by FedEx/TNT not to carry such items.”
Unknown to most vendors, manufacturers, and customers, UK Fedex had recently added sex dolls on their list of prohibited items and will no longer ship or receive sex dolls in the UK. All sex dolls that arrived in the UK via Fedex recently were shipped back to China. Child-like sex dolls have already been banned in the UK since 2017, but now Fedex UK has proactively and unprecedentedly taken things one step further by banning all sex dolls outright, including adult-sized sex dolls. Those who had suspected that the child-like sex doll ban would lead to a complete ban of all sex dolls may have been on to something.
How This Affects You
If you live in the UK, you can no longer ship, receive, import, or export sex dolls via Fedex. Keep in mind, sex dolls are not banned in the UK. Fedex has simply stopped accepting them. You can still ship and receive dolls via UPS or other shipping companies. If you order a sex doll from China and it ships to the UK via Fedex, it will be returned to China.
If you do not live in the UK, this does not affect you UNLESS the Fedex in your country decides to follow UK Fedex’s example.
This is really massive news. UK Fedex, a major shipping company, has banned all sex dolls regardless of size and appearance, and have labelled them as “Pornography and/or obscene material.” This certainly does not bode well for the rest of the world.
References:
FedEx now have dolls on a prohibited items list for the UK by The-Doll-House
Possibly the end of the road for dolls in the UK by haremlover
Fedex Global Shipping Restrictions & Prohibited Items
Thoughts on UK Fedex’s recent ban on sex dolls? Comment below!
I got a response from FedEx after emailing FedEx CEO, it was forwarded to a customer correspondent and mailed to me in PDF form. He says it was always their policy not to ship adult sex dolls if they had known what was inside.
See explanation in this link https://imgur.com/Z8SmYuJ
Not particularly useful but is about as good as you’ll get out of them.
Hi Mark,
Thanks for sharing your findings with us. I am not surprised by his response and don’t think this policy will ever be reversed. It’s a sad day for UK doll enthusiasts and a shame that a large shipping company like Fedex took a stance like this. Unfortunately, given the current political and cultural climate, I can only see it getting worse in the UK. Hopefully, some groups can arise to help combat further laws and regulations against sex dolls in the future, but it sounds like a tough battle.
I have sent an email to Fred Smith the CEO of FedEx outlining the issue with citations and links including here and i’ll update if i get a response.
I was rather annoyed reading all of this as i am in the UK and am a doll owner. I’ll rather communicate my concern/complaint to the top however as communications people do with customer support are likely to be lacking any clarity and are usually meant for actual customers who have reference numbers/tracking and the like.
My gut instinct on the matter is that it is indeed a legal issue and that the claim by FedEx UK that it is not is actually false.
Why do i say that?
well the UK re-enacted laws which previously made blow up dolls illegal. Sexdolls have actually only been legal since about 1987. They use the laws now for child-like dolls. There is no official legislation targeting child like dolls so they put other laws back in force.
However these were placed in force BEFORE we exited the EU.
The reason sexdolls of any sort were legalized was because of the EU and as long as dolls were passed through there they was legal and you could essentially use EU law as a get out clause on obscene article claims.
This no longer applies now (possibly) which means that the dolls are illegal again.
It’s not that they have been made illegal it’s that they was ALWAYS illegal so long as the ACTS were enforced on obscene articles…well unfortunately those acts are in force as of 2017 and the only reason it doesn’t apply to adult dolls is because of the EU article basically acting as a legal protection.
In seeing this the couriers may be starting to recognise that they could in the future be prosecuted for shipping the dolls, as brexit changes work their way through the system this does not happen overnight but gradually an enforced law becomes recognised but due to red-tape and misunderstandings it is assumed it isn’t a legal issue.
Sometimes the communications are a blend of the courier and the border force, the courier is told it is a prohibited item at a higher level but people in lower levels of the company assume it was an internal decision because if they research it they think it isn’t law when in fact it actually is.
This is why i contacted the CEO, because it’s possible that you can get confirmation of that if it is the case (i do not know but speculating here). Then you know where you stand and who you actually have to complain to and who is making the decisions.