ActionMailer Stripping/Corrupting Special Characters (String Encoding Problem?)

I'm hoping that I'm just missing something simple --- but I'm banging my head against a wall on this one...

I have a simple mailer model that sends a single-part, text/plain message (generated using an ERB template). In that email I am trying to include special characters (the copyright character © in this case -- but anything would make me happy right now).

But no matter how I insert the character into the document, the email is delivered with this character missing or as an unknown character (mail client shows a "?" or special "mystery character").

I have confirmed that my email header is set to UTF-8 encoding.

So far I've tried: <%= 169.chr %> <%= "/xA9" %> ©

What gives?

BTW, I'm testing using rSpec and the create_my_mailer_method method which uses TMail - and the specs pass just fine. It's just actual delivery that's different here.

-Chris

I have the same problem and reported it here:

http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/JRUBY-2686