What is Pending Address Verification?

JDS Labs spends about 30 minutes per business day reviewing orders flagged by our credit card system. From our policies page:

Orders may be held for additional review when our shipping or finance departments encounter uncertainty. We will contact you immediately if further information is required.

Secrecy over Transparency

Only 0.2% of orders JDS Labs shipped in 2018 were fraudulent, which is about par for the headphone industry. When a credit card payment is declared fraudulent, banks bear no responsibility, while the credit card company is responsible only for cost of issuing a replacement credit card. The merchant (JDS Labs) is fully responsible for the entire transaction cost, in addition to a chargeback fee of about 15% on a $100 transaction. Thus, as a merchant, it’s in our best interest to prevent the acceptance of stolen credit cards. Every chargeback hurts us and ultimately raises the cost of business.

We’ve implemented proprietary logic over the years in our shopping cart, and every year the game changes. Thieves constantly find new ways to overcome previous rules. In 2016, we noticed a scheme in which packages were being shipped within a 25 mile radius of a particular city. After suffering several chargebacks of credit cards that passed billing address checks, we released all relevant information to our local police department, who collaborated with the police department of the shipping location. They were able to set up a patrol of the location and while the thief was never identified, the fraud stopped. This particular scheme has not happened since. Like other businesses, we keep our methods secretive so as to give no advantage to thieves.

We Try to Help You

Spending time every day to stop fraud is no fun. We understand that false positives are even less fun for our legitimate customers. We do our best to ship your order without wasting your time.

If we encounter billing uncertainty, we will contact you within 1 business day. If we must cancel an order, we will inform you of our decision and offer an alternative checkout method.

How You Can Checkout with Ease

If possible, please use PayPal instead of a credit card.