diff --git a/jobrunner/test/utils_test.py b/jobrunner/test/utils_test.py
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..148a489
--- /dev/null
+++ b/jobrunner/test/utils_test.py
@@ -0,0 +1,18 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env python
+# Copyright (c) 2021 Arista Networks, Inc.  All rights reserved.
+# Arista Networks, Inc. Confidential and Proprietary.
+
+from __future__ import absolute_import, division, print_function
+
+import pytest
+
+from jobrunner.utils import autoDecode
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize(("value", "encoding"), [
+    (b"Waiting for '\xe2\x9d\xaf|[Pp]db' in session "
+     b"routing-enabled-structure_0_64\n(Pdb++)\n", "utf-8"),
+    (b"hi there", "ascii"),
+])
+def testAutoDecode(value, encoding):
+    assert value.decode(encoding) == autoDecode(value)
diff --git a/jobrunner/utils.py b/jobrunner/utils.py
index d87f778..9e6c9d6 100644
--- a/jobrunner/utils.py
+++ b/jobrunner/utils.py
@@ -351,6 +351,8 @@ def sudoKillProcGroup(pgrp):
 def autoDecode(byteArray):
     detected = chardet.detect(byteArray)
     encoding = detected['encoding']
-    if detected['confidence'] < 0.5:  # very arbitrary
+    if detected['confidence'] < 0.8:  # very arbitrary
+        LOG.debug("char encoding below confidence level 0.8 (%r). "
+                  "Fall back to UTF-8.", detected)
         encoding = 'utf-8'
     return byteArray.decode(encoding)