To delay, dodge, or frustrate (someone), especially by providing useless information or directions.
take the wind out of someone's sails
verb
To discourage someone greatly; to cause someone to lose hope or the will to continue; to thwart or minimize someone's ambitions.
How often have the words give someone the runaround and take the wind out of someone's sails occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )