Personally don't agree with Les on the single folder share, yes it can and should be controlled by NTFS permissions... however I know that dropping into a main share folder for your home directory and being presented with 1,000+ folders is a pain to get to yours. Yes you could create shortcuts to take you there, but if using that route then there would be no need to even map a drive for the user in the first place. But the reason you do it is to make it easier for your users and cut down on the helpdesk calls. Many users don't have a clue how to create a shortcut or map a drive like it or not and you can't personally spend the time with each and every user training them.

Well now that you have folder names that don't match @UserID without seeing or knowing the specific pattern it makes it difficult to suggest a method for logging errors or how to do the rename in the first place. However it sounds like you have everything correct except for not using the @UserID in the first place.

We use hidden shares as well but with the $ appended to the user's login ID and setup from user's profile and not in the script. I do use a script though to set that as well.

The good thing is that once the user folders match @UserID it will make large scale changes much easier to automate in the future. That being said, I would still not recommend setting up USERIDs like this: John.Smith (JSMITH, or Jmiddle-initialSMITH, or JSMITH01 would be better) etc... But that is a personal preference on my part.

Just remember as the size of the organization scales up, each nuance might cause additional Administrative effort on your part. Many (not all) of the recommendations by Microsoft that you see or learn in a class are born out of at least some type of real experience. Unless you specifically know why you're deviating from their recommendation then you should probably adhere to it. If you don't have the personal experience yet, but you think that some recommendation is invalid then check or ask in one of the many MVP sites on the Web or even here in the General forum. There are many good experienced Admins that either Moderate or frequent this site.