As an electrician, you get conditioned to retracting your arm very quickly when an electric shock is felt.
Word from a Fire-fighter, it helps to touch things with the back of your hands.
One other thing Kiwi, do you tend to wear a lot of non-natural fibres in your clothing?, like Nylon or Polyprop and the like?.
The actual charge is not from the device to you, it is from the static charge built up on your body, generated by tribo-electric generation and when you touch any metallic object of any size (if it is earthed, all the better), the charge will then move to the metallic object.
Cars are renowned for this.
Wear cotton clothing and the problem goes away.
