So I talked with support multiple times as well as our CSM (paying customer). I didn’t get the impression that this situation was going to change anytime soon. So I tried their alternative which is to forward the email to a hubspot mail address. To my surprise, this works quite well. From the Customer’s perspective, they can tell no difference. Email’s come into Hubspot appearing to have come directly from the customer. So as I see it, it’s a valid solution to the problem.
The only issue that would remain using this method, is that if your using a shared mailbox, you would need to do something to purge the old emails periodically since Hubspot is just getting forwarded (however there is a way around that to by using the option to forward and not keep a copy). My solution was just to use a distribution group and make the hubspot email an external contact and the only member of the distribution group.. Again. works perfectly fine.