In my case there was a race, as I needed the ajax response to fill a hidden field and send the form after it's filled. I fixed it with putting e.preventDefault() into a condition.
var all_is_done=false;
$("form").submit(function(e){
if(all_is_done==false){
e.preventDefault();
do_the_stuff();
}
});
function do_the_stuf(){
//do stuff
all_is_done=true;
$("form").submit();
}