That's cool. Was there any data caps?

It was the same thing on private BBS systems. There were a bunch of applications and scripts that basically let you go online, do your business as quickly as possible, and hang up. I remember I primarily used a system running PCBoard and Qmail was the software that let you do most things offline.

ADDED:Private systems didn't (ever?) have a time charge. The bigger ones usually still offered some lines for free users but offered preferred access for subscribers.

I remember Delphi had one called DIJ/Delphi Internet Jet, I want to say it actually did everything in QWK format but it's been so long I don't remember. I do remember using QWK to get a lot of stuff off of WWIV<->UUCP gateways and FidoNet.

One of the things that kept me at the time on Delphi was 1) X-Files had a huge fanbase there and Chris Carter would regularly join the forums and 2) You could break out of the menus and get down to the VMS shell which is how I first learned something other than DOS/Windows.

I still racked up massive phone bills even with the offline readers.

One of the peculiarities of telephone rates in those days was that it was very common for intra-state calls outside your local calling area (depending on your phone plan there was often a "free" local calling area and an extended region of some sort as I recall) to be more expensive than interstate calls.

ADDED: BTW, in the early eighties, long distance rates were starting to come down but they were still in the tens of cents per minute so something over a dollar/minute in today's currency.