As an example, for a 0.027BTC transaction the fee I paid was 0.000164BTC which is comparable to the on-chain fee.
This is not possible as of now.
The 0.000164BTC is around $7 it is still high maybe the operator is asking for high transaction fees or maybe the fees he is talking about are the ones he paid for opening a channel.
@OP can you make it clear in what node did you open a channel ACINQ, Electrum trampoline, trampoline hodlistreco?