I'm not only claiming to speak the language, I not only have spoken it with various friends but also I have a formal B1 certificate from institute francais. Which proves that pronouncing the e of mere and the first e of ecole exactly the same is not very important. Also for reference I used to hang out with an examiner from the same institute and told me they only care about your accents unless it's something monstrous only at C1 level. You can pass the exam (official from the state) without writing any accents even in written composition.

This is like the c++ pointers guy complaining "how can this guy write so ugly PHP". I'm the PHP guy and I'm a fan of the way @levelsio is doing things in a simple and effective way that makes others annoyed. But in reality his projects work. And I chat with french friends :)