We've all encountered this problem - you have a figure placed in your scene, apply a pose present and it flies off to some remote location. This is especially problematic with couples poses, and I apologize to those who downloaded my pose sets and have experienced this.
I don't know how others deal with this issue, but at least with couples and group poses, I find it helpful to zero all figure poses and place them in a single null before applying poses. They may still fly away, but it's easier to put them where you want them.
Hope this helps.