I think spending is acquiring in most cases bc you want to swap tokens to the desired denomination and probably sometimes consolidate your proofs as well.
"Acquiring" can mean minting with LN, that's more fees than swapping.
Sending tokens to the other party without a swap means the recipient must swap them to avoid double spending so there's your fee on that too.
In summary, most every #cashu tx will at least require the recipient to swap, rarely the sender can avoid a fee.
It makes sense because at the end of the day without fees no payment system is sustainable.
But to your point, #ecash is massively lower fees than LN or onchain.