It is complicated, I've been told that not all passport police have the software system for calculating your time out of the country in the past 365 days, I'm told however that when you come to apply for residency renewal, they will at that time look back at time spent away and at this point will discover that you are possibly staying in the country without a valid visa?
Now, your defense may be that the passport police didn't pick up the problem and so you were unaware of the problem, but it's not often that the authorities here allow ignorance as a defense.
Like you say, it's a dilemma !