It annoys me when they ring 10 numbers and the first one who picks up gets the call and the rest of us, who have dropped what we are doing to answer the phone thinking it's friend, family or a customer and don't get there on time, are inconvenienced. Dial 1471 and you find its an withheld number.
When you pick the phone up there's a couple of second gap of nothing while they put a name to the answerer. I normally just hang up before they say Hello. Or you could just say nothing and listen;
Or when they ask if they can speak to Mr ----- -------- then just say I call him, hang on a sec, he is at the bottom of the garden. Just put the phone down before they can continue the conversation by asking when its convenient to ring back again and just let them hang on.....
Today we got a call from an Energy Supplier, and I told the lady that we weren't at home to take their call. Caused a bit of confusion as that wasn't in their handling objections script.