I didn't really plan to lose my retroflexes, either; unlike the R, which I ditched instantly, they disappeared gradually, without my noticing it. It wasn't until I went to China and had people guessing that I had studied in Taiwan within half a minute of my opening my mouth that I realised how, er, Taiwanated my Chinese had become. I mean, dropping words such as yi1huir4 and yi1dianr3 in favour of yi1xia4 and yi1dian3dian3 was a conscious choice, but losing my retroflexes was not.
We never had any Zheng/Zeng problems at my university, but our history teacher had some trouble distinguishing between -ing and -in at the end of words. There were times when we all believed he was talking about the Qin Dynasty when he was in fact discussing the Qing Dynasty. That was pretty confusing sometimes. And then there are of course people in Southern China who can't distinguish between N and L, or between F and H, but you quickly get used to those.
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We never had any Zheng/Zeng problems at my university, but our history teacher had some trouble distinguishing between -ing and -in at the end of words. There were times when we all believed he was talking about the Qin Dynasty when he was in fact discussing the Qing Dynasty. That was pretty confusing sometimes. And then there are of course people in Southern China who can't distinguish between N and L, or between F and H, but you quickly get used to those.