As was mine.
In my case, the HOA had mailed a bill with a due date so close the mailing date, that it was impossible to comply with.
That was an HOA for my condo. I thought their rules were reasonable. Similar to the type of stuff @LSLGuy discusses. Their biggest problem was incompetence. At the time it was a self-managed HOA. So it ended up with things like employees of the HOA also being board members of the HOA, and hiring friends and stuff.
In one instance, an owner had a fire in his unit. There was minimal structure damage, but he didn’t have insurance (contrary to HOA rules). The HOA manager, who was also on the board, felt bad for him, so the HOA paid for the damage to his property.
I don’t think there was anything other than maybe minor corruption, but mostly just very poor management, like delaying maintenance, failing to save for known upcoming maintenance, and such. That caused multiple expensive assessments, and general disrepair of community property.
After 40 years or so of that, the HOA hired a management company, and things have been so much better since. They setup a plan to catch up on all of the delayed maintenance, and have executed it, all with no special assessments.