What happened to you is a very strange thing. Can you include addresses here? It has been several months since it took more than 10 minutes to confirm my transactions. In fact, I get confirmations within two minutes and up to medium fees.
generally the problem that i experienced wass mostly in the past week ever since BCash fork drama started and bitcoin price also fell. bitcoin lost a small percentage of its hashrate which made finding blocks a little slower and also like always sudden and big price changes invites a surge of transactions. so when you low ball your fee to pay the minimum amount to have high priority (like 5 s/b) then a surge happens your tx falls behind.
so you either have to pay higher than recommended or get lucky and see a block right away.