diff --git a/pyfpdb/Configuration.py b/pyfpdb/Configuration.py
index 26d1befc..ce2dae50 100644
--- a/pyfpdb/Configuration.py
+++ b/pyfpdb/Configuration.py
@@ -207,8 +207,8 @@ DATABASE_TYPES = (
         DATABASE_TYPE_MYSQL,
         )
 
-#LOCALE_ENCODING = locale.getdefaultlocale()[1]
-LOCALE_ENCODING = locale.getpreferredencoding()
+LOCALE_ENCODING = locale.getdefaultlocale()[1]
+#LOCALE_ENCODING = locale.getpreferredencoding() #this breaks on Mac OSX - please leave this comment
 if LOCALE_ENCODING == "US-ASCII":
     LOCALE_ENCODING = "cp1252"
     if (os.uname()[0]!="Darwin"):