By color management policies, I am assuming you are talking about the color options at that are available at the time you save the file. If so it cannot hurt to imbed them, but they are primarily used for in-house proofing on your own printers. From what you described regarding your print service and the differences you experienced I would suggest that you consider getting a color scale print from them and adjusting your monitor to match it. You can do this using the Adobe Gamma Adjustment tool in your control panel, and save it as a monitor profile. Then when you are at the point where you need to do the final adjustments before send it off to your print service, you can turn that profile on and rest assured that what you see on the screen is what you will get off the press. This does have to be done about every 6 months or so as monitors change with time. BTW... You can create as many of these profiles as you need, and just name them accordingly. For example, we use at least four different print houses plus our own in house two color press. Each one has its own monitor Gamma profile set, so I can just activate whichever one I need according to the press the work will be done on.