I registered just to say I'm also having the same problem. It's been going on for the past two to three years. Always Regular and the Radiant both break me out in this burning! I use the fragrance free and still have a problem.
The burn from urine hitting this area is immense. I can only describe it like pouring alcohol on a road rash. Water doesn't hurt when it touches it. It's so bizarre.
I have been using Always pads for many years and have been having a burning along the area that the pad touches skin - almost like a chemical burn - around the second day of my period. I am wondering if they changed what they use in the middle of the pad so make the pad so "absorbant". It doesn't burn to urinate so I know it isn't an infection but just about brings me to tears when I wipe. Maybe we should be writing to Always to find out what is happending. This could cause a lot of their customers to use other products.
I have experienced similar symptoms that you describe. However, I have been using Always Maxi Pads since I first got my period as a preteen. I have never had any complications, although I do recall maybe having a sore or two every once in a great while, and I assumed it was almost like a diaper rash--the plastic irritating my skin combined with moisture from menstruation. My mother had told me that me and my sisters all had bad reactions to Pampers diapers as babies--where we broke out in major diaper rashes--and that Huggies was the brand we switched to that cured it! Moving on to now, I have no idea why I would experience a bad reaction to the brand I have always been using. That's why I've assumed that they are making the pads differently, or use different 'ingredients' every so often, and women around the world are experiencing bad reactions at different times--meaning, it's not necessarily one thing causing this. It's odd because none of my sisters have had issues with Always. The first time I had symptoms was my last period (in April 2010). They included bumps (which became red with scratching), and were sore and irritated. The irritation all together existed between my legs in the crotch area..pretty much along the path of where the pad usually fits. Oddly enough, my sister experienced other symptoms, which made us both go to the doctor. It was found that we both had a yeast infection, and we've taken meds to help. My sister seems to be fine now, and mine faded.. but now that I realize it, I think the symptoms vanished because I was off my period! Now that it's May, and 'that time of the month' has come again, I have the same symptoms! I'm sure it must be a reaction to pads, so I switched to Kotex (which feels more like cotton than plastic), but I'm not sure if I've felt relief. The itching is more of outbreaks, but the bumps don't necessarily go away just because I don't feel it. So now I have no idea if a yeast infection caused this reaction, or it is a totally separate issue, and that certain pads are just being made differently, which is causing all of this. I may see the doctor again. But I'd like to tell you that you are not alone!