The company said it has no way to determine whether DVDs or other adult material is legal or not so it will never ship porn of any kind.
Sasha, a company spokesperson said, “It’s on the list of prohibited items. Other items on the prohibited list include weapons, drugs, waste, insects, alcohol, firearms, gambling devices and cigarettes.”
Reports said that on Dec. 1, Todd Klinck, co-owner of Goodhandy’s on Church Street in Toronto ran into trouble shipping DVDs to Pierre Fitch, a Montreal-based gay porn star who left the DVDs at Klinck’s place and needed them back quickly.
“I have sent porn in Canada and internationally using FedEx many, many, many times. I’ve also used Canada Post and many other methods without any problems,” Klinck said.
Klinck said he had asked the FedEx counter clerk for help in determining what box to use to ship 14 DVDs. But when the clerk saw that the contents of Klinck’s bag contained gay porn DVDs he got the store manage involved and they refused to ship the package.
“I told him they’re adult films. I’m not going to pull them all out in the store. I was just being practical. There could be kids around... At that point he got really awkward," Klinck said.
“They said they wouldn’t ship it. They were nice about it, but said they couldn’t ship it,” he said.
“I’m not even sending this stuff across the border, even though that’s not illegal either. I’m sending it to the person who produced it. I don’t understand. This is just discrimination.”
Klinck was told FedEx has a new policy that requires them to open all packages unless it’s from an account holder.
“I told him that it was a little absurd. So they open every box and repackage them? How can they continue to guarantee fast overnight delivery? Besides, I told them Pierre Fitch is an account holder,” Klinck said.
Klinck then grabbed a box himself, packaged the DVDs and put in the drop box asking the clerk if that was OK, who then said, "uhh, yeah, I guess you can.”
On Dec. 3, Klinck told website Xtra that Fitch received the package, but is still confused about FedEx's policies.
“FedEx is telling me they don’t ship adult material, period. When they called the depot they were told ‘no adult material,’ that’s the part that’s new to me. I didn’t know that was an issue.”
Peter Diamantakos, operations manager at the FedEx Lakeshore depot that dispatches packages from Toronto, told Xtra that packages attached to an account holder are not inspected. But added that FedEx does have a policy that no adult material can be shipped.
“Packages going to international destinations, anything on cash, check or credit card, is being inspected,” he said.
But Klinck’s package was destined for Quebec so it should have been allowed to go without inspection.
“It’s just to control what’s going through,” Diamantakos said.
“That’s just our policy. We don’t know exactly what’s in that material. If someone comes in with a box and says they are sending pornographic material, there’s some (material) that is just not acceptable.”
“Child pornography is illegal (for example),” he said. “We don’t view the videos.”
