agreed. by the same reasoning, affect and effect, compliment and complement also shouldn't be considered. It takes a well trained ear and a good tongue to get it right, but by my well trained ear and tongue they do not qualify.
Compliment and complement really are pronounced the same, though. Pronunciation is fairly discrete, either there's a noticable difference, or there's no difference at all.
The phenomenon you have fallen prey to is hyperarticulation, also responsible for the 'off-ten' pronunciation of 'often'. (Compare to soften, for example.)
Pronunciation is a bad place on which to perch your well-trained pride.
For the record, the OP's strong reaction to people getting the words wrong is not something that bugs me. I commonly mistype words like weather/whether and there/their.