Abstract: A telephone on-hold system (10) allows a calling party such as a consumer (20) to place the telephone call on-hold from the consumer's handset (18C) in response to dialing a number where the receiving end (R) put the call on-hold pending availability of an agent (22). While the call is on-hold from the consumer's end, a counter-message is played to alert the agent (22) to notify the consumer's handset (18C) that the agent (22) is available, such as by depressing touch-tone keys at the agent's end (18R). The system (10) recognizes the tones and provides an alert (40) to the consumer (20) so as to allow the consumer (20) to end the on-hold status of the call from the consumer's end and undertake normal conversation with the agent (22).