1. During the process of obtaining authorization from your bank for a charge to your credit card, we send your bank the billing address that you have provided in our shopping cart as well as the amount that you wish to charge.

2. Your bank first confirms that your card has credit available for the charge. If the card has adequate credit, then your bank sends us an authorization number.

3. Your bank also compares the billing address of your card with the one we have sent to them that you provided in the shopping cart. If the billing addresses do not match, then your bank sends us a code identifying the type of mismatch, such as a mismatch with the street address, zip code, or the CVV2 code. This mismatch does not prevent your bank from authorizing the charge, but it does prevent us from actually charging your credit card.

4. We will not charge your card if there is a mismatch. This is a standard fraud-prevention measure.

5. Your bank will not know that we have declined the transaction based on the mismatch. In fact, your bank will simply show the transaction as pre-approved. However, it does not mean that any money will be removed from your account. It just means that the charge has been pre-approved. Since no money will be removed, the pre-approval will disappear in 5-7 days and your charge will disappear. As a result, your available credit will return to what it was before the pre-approval.

6. When your card is declined by us due to a problem with the billing address, normally you will receive a message such as "AVS mismatch."

7. If you have a message such as "Address Info not available for Cardholder," this usually means your bank’s databases were not available at that particular moment to check address verification. If this is the case, then your bank cannot verify the billing address and the transaction is declined by us even if your bank approves it. This is more common with banks outside of the USA.

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