I have. A while back I installed the trial of a large game. Tried it, then removed it. Before I tried it I had a small amount of 'settings' data. Afterwards it was massive, and did not clear on removing the game. Had to hard reset to recover. It seems some apps reserve massive amounts of 'settings' space and then don't release it even after being removed! Best advice is to hard reset, and then avoid poorly written apps.
Watch out when 8.1 arrives. Currently only a small amount of settings data is backed up by the phone automatically. Come 8.1 it is said that ALL app settings will be backed up. If your phone suddenly starts regularly chewing through a gig or two every time it decides to auto-backup your 'settings' you'll burn through your data plan in no time at all.