I just caught wind of this brother. Let me guess was it the t400 you were pinning? It is our only product we know that has a slight bite to it. Some people are okay with it some get bit. We make no bones about this as most t400 will have a bite. if not.. then it could be as you said the needle or how you store your gear. In all out years we have never had complaints about any of our products except the t400 and our R&D department does the best they can to come up with a formula to make the t400 as painless as possible but some are just sensitive to it.