I just realized that I wrote "3 in a row" having no idea how many it was. I think I wrote that because I figured 4 would just be too unbelievable, whereas 2 would not have made you say "every time".
In my case, I thought it just had to do with who I was publishing with... in all 4 papers that I published with someone famous, they just recommended publication "with the following recommended changes". But with the one paper I tried to get through all by myself, they just flat out rejected it... so I figured "oh, nobody famous to back me up, they don't believe I know what I'm talking about." This theory is substantiated by the fact that most of my response to the first referee was just dedicated to quoting famous people who had said my paper was interesting... that seemed to make the difference. Nevertheless, with your papers there must have been something else going on.
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In my case, I thought it just had to do with who I was publishing with... in all 4 papers that I published with someone famous, they just recommended publication "with the following recommended changes". But with the one paper I tried to get through all by myself, they just flat out rejected it... so I figured "oh, nobody famous to back me up, they don't believe I know what I'm talking about." This theory is substantiated by the fact that most of my response to the first referee was just dedicated to quoting famous people who had said my paper was interesting... that seemed to make the difference. Nevertheless, with your papers there must have been something else going on.