Heh... doesn't matter. Real Excel file or Excel converted to CSV... you'll have the same problems because the problem isn't in the file type. Unless the Excel file is laid out like a table in SQL Server (and they're usually not because it's too ugly a format that's not like having things in month columns, etc), then you're still going to have to put up with unpivoting, etc, etc, etc.
That's a part of the reason why I don't use SSIS for such things. I use the ACE drivers which allows me to do everything I need to in T-SQL, which handles all of that quite nicely.
As a bit of a sidebar, I'm never surprised but frequently amazed at the fact that Microsoft doesn't make products that easily allow the exchange of data with other Microsoft products except, possibly, by using another of my least favorite things in the world and that's XML.