Controlling SPAM recommendations

Question

I recently moved our organization from MessageLabs to FOPE. Ever since I am getting buried in complaints about spam. Originally I went with the default options. No ASF, and action was spam quarantine. Users complained to no end that they had to visit an
external location to view or preview their spam and/or too many things getting to their inbox that was spam. 
Upon the recommendation of a MS support engineer I enabled all of the ASF options. Well then I got buried in complaints that everything was being detected as spam.  So I followed the best practices for configuring FOPE guide and enabled only image links,
spf record fail and from addr auth. It has quieted down a bit, but I still can get complaints for too much spam or for legit items being detected as spam. To make matters worse, I changed our action to x-header so that items could be sent to users Junk Email
folder in hopes that they will not complain about having to visit an external quarantine. But it seems that that action is not always 100 percent consistent.  Some items still get quarantined. I asked the MS support engineer. The response--yeah, that
happens sometimes. 
Exchange admin is not my only task. I also do SCCM and all networking here ( switching, routing, firewall, etc). So needless to say, I do not have all day to play with spam setting or field user complaints about the same. I was really hoping this transition
would be smoother.  There is a fairly large cost savings since FOPE was already covered under our SA agreement. So management decided we should try FOPE rather than pay X dollars to MessageLabs.  But this whole thing is proving to be a right PITA.
Does anyone here have some more experience with this service and can throw me a bone or two about how to best configure the service so that it is not ticking off all my users constantly?
Thanks

Answer 1

Richard,
Just so you know, I've gone the "slash and burn" route by deleting an email account, too. It works for a while, but the spam eventually finds you again. So eventually, you'll be right back where you are now, but you will have had the added headache of changing your email address.
One other thing that you might look into is turning on your ISP's spam filtering, if applicable. Assuming your main email account is with your internet ISP, you probably have some options for using the email server's filtering, and these filters are pretty good at getting rid of the bulk of these annoying emails. Typically, this all happens transparently; the "bogus" emails are identified and placed in a separate folder on the server, and they never get to your inbox. When left on the server for a set period of time, they are deleted. The filters with which I have had experience have always been well up to date, and have been excellent at distinguishing good email from bad.
There's even the "sentinel" type of filter, where any email from an unknown address (unknown to your ISP's server) must first be verified by you before it will be passed. In these scenarios, every email sender address is rejected unless you have specifically authorized it. When you receive an email from an address not known to the server, the message gets held in limbo while the server sends an automated reply to the sender. The sender is given the option of sending an "authorization request" to you. When you approve the request, the original email passes to you, and any further email from that address is automatically let through.
You should be able to find these options, if they exist for you, if you log into your ISP's webmail interface.
Scott