Last-call return
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Last Call Return, commonly called Call Return, is a telephone feature code offered by telephone service providers to give a called party the time and telephone number of the last received call, and may also offer the facility to place a call back to the calling party.
The access number for this facility varies per country and provider:
- Canada and US: star code *69 (*66 in some markets); 1169 (1166 in some markets) on rotary phone/pulse dial telephones. (In the USA, "to star-69" is sometimes used as a verb)
- UK: 1471 (also used in Gibraltar, Ireland and the Falkland Islands)
- Australia: *10# (*69 on Optus HFC Telephony)
- France: 3131
- Israel: *42
In the UK, after dialing "1471", the caller can press "3" to automatically return the call. Until August 2004, this service was free; since that date it has incurred a charge, as of 10 January 2007 a per call fee of 10.5 pence is charged. It was the topic of a 2001 episode of the sitcom Coupling.
The service provider may also offer a facility through which the calling party can prevent their number being revealed to the called party, either permanently or on a per-call basis. This is achieved by prefixing the dialed number with:
- UK: 141
- US: *67
- Australia: 1831
Conversely, to send the caller number on a line where the number is normally withheld, the following prefixes can be dialled:
- UK: 1470 (also used in Gibraltar)
- Ireland: 142
- US: *82
In Ireland and Gibraltar, ex-directory or unlisted numbers are withheld by default.
In Canada, the feature is commonly marketed by telephone companies as a combination of two features:
- Call Again, a form of automatic ring back, allows a caller, on reaching a busy signal, to hang up, dial a special code, and be called back automatically when the called number is no longer busy, usually with a limit of 30 minutes.
- Call Return allows a customer to dial a code that identifies the last incoming call. On some types of central office equipment, it announces the number and offers the call-back option; on others, it simply attempts a connection without an announcement.
