How is it acceptable in 2023 to pay $2.99 in fees to purchase $100 of Ethereum on Coinbase?

I know this is kind of a moot point, and I am most likely way too late to jump on this hatorade train because most of you have known about this for awhile, but I myself just yesterday knocked the dust and cobwebs off my Coinbase account, only to be charged a $2.99 fee for $100 worth of Ethereum.

I know, I know, I didn't have to accept the transaction, but I got caught up in the hopium, and for some stupid reason I accepted the ridiculous fee in the hopes that I would be able to transfer my newly purchased Ethereum off of Coinbase and into my MetaMask wallet... and now I was pissed.

Not only was I shaken down by these Coinbase thugs for a 3% fee, but now I was informed via my e-mail receipt that I would be able to transfer my newly purchased Ethereum off of Coinbase on "July 6, 2023"! A whole week later, which totally destroyed my hopes of losing my $97.01 gambling on some new crapcoin that just got released and was tradeable via Uniswap, which I'm sure after Coinbase hits me with an astronomical transfer fee no doubt is going to be even less to gamble with.

Anyway, the point of my rant is this. If you're like me, and simply dollar cost average reasonable amounts of money, say $100 to $200 a month into a premium coin such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, why on Earth would anyone choose Coinbase?

Even if you got their "One" premium subscription for $29.99 a month, and trades were free, that would still be 14.995% of your $200 monthly investment, or 29.99% of your $100 monthly investment!

I guess the question I am really asking, unless you wanted some exotic coin or token that is easily and somewhat safely accessible on Coinbase, why would you ever use it over something like say Robinhood, where all trades and transfers are free?

Heck, even if you just wanted to take advantage of Coinbase's decent returns on their stable coin, which is I believe 4%, or the myriad of staking programs they have, unless you are using "One" and putting pretty large deposits in every month, how does using Coinbase ever make sense?

In conclusion, please let me know if there is away to avoid these hefty fees, because I was under the impression that if you used a connected bank account the fees were waved, but maybe this has changed, please advise on this, because I really would like to give Coinbase some of my business, but I won't go bankrupt in the process to do so, when there are just too many better options available for the the small amounts I can afford to lose. Thank you... end rant.

Edit: Great news, someone just solved my rant:

You don't have to pay that fee if you transfer fiat to Coinbase first and then use their exchange manually.

Do not use Convert or Buy feature.

Source: u/Technical-Western897