Did you miss anything here? Was it like 65 cents for transacting 0.017BTC or something? Anyway, after the time you mentioned, transaction fees skyrocketed and then slowly coming down. I checked last week it was around 20 sat per byte but right now it is 35 sat per byte; it keeps fluctuating. Still, it's no longer something new. It happens like almost all the time.

There are times when you will be making transactions and once you send it the money will be sent and confirmed within a very short time. I make use of Blockchain wallet, when making a transaction it's usually the regular fee option that I go for and when I click on it, it shows that the transaction will take around one hour. But there are times I will send and the transaction will deliver almost at the same time. So, it's based on the network being less busy. When there are too many transactions then you will have to pay more.