diff --git a/changedetectionio/content_fetcher.py b/changedetectionio/content_fetcher.py
index 33a38427..ce83ebe0 100644
--- a/changedetectionio/content_fetcher.py
+++ b/changedetectionio/content_fetcher.py
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@ class EmptyReply(Exception):
 class Fetcher():
     error = None
     status_code = None
-    content = None # Should be bytes?
+    content = None # Should always be bytes.
 
     fetcher_description ="No description"
 
@@ -129,7 +129,6 @@ class html_webdriver(Fetcher):
         # driver.quit() seems to cause better exceptions
         driver.quit()
 
-
         return True
 
 # "html_requests" is listed as the default fetcher in store.py!
@@ -146,6 +145,8 @@ class html_requests(Fetcher):
                          timeout=timeout,
                          verify=False)
 
+        # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44203397/python-requests-get-returns-improperly-decoded-text-instead-of-utf-8
+        # Return bytes here
         html = r.text
 
 
diff --git a/changedetectionio/store.py b/changedetectionio/store.py
index fb7cede5..3cc049c0 100644
--- a/changedetectionio/store.py
+++ b/changedetectionio/store.py
@@ -367,6 +367,10 @@ class ChangeDetectionStore:
         import uuid
 
         output_path = "{}/{}".format(self.datastore_path, watch_uuid)
+        # Incase the operator deleted it, check and create.
+        if not os.path.isdir(output_path):
+            mkdir(output_path)
+
         fname = "{}/{}.stripped.txt".format(output_path, uuid.uuid4())
         with open(fname, 'wb') as f:
             f.write(contents)
diff --git a/changedetectionio/tests/test_notification.py b/changedetectionio/tests/test_notification.py
index 3cfeecf9..21083066 100644
--- a/changedetectionio/tests/test_notification.py
+++ b/changedetectionio/tests/test_notification.py
@@ -159,6 +159,9 @@ def test_check_notification(client, live_server):
 
     with open("test-datastore/notification.txt", "r") as f:
         notification_submission = f.read()
+        print ("Notification submission was:", notification_submission)
+        # Re #342 - check for accidental python byte encoding of non-utf8/string
+        assert "b'" not in notification_submission
 
         assert re.search('Watch UUID: [0-9a-f]{8}(-[0-9a-f]{4}){3}-[0-9a-f]{12}', notification_submission, re.IGNORECASE)
         assert "Watch title: my title" in notification_submission
diff --git a/changedetectionio/update_worker.py b/changedetectionio/update_worker.py
index 4ab1d806..a8992d96 100644
--- a/changedetectionio/update_worker.py
+++ b/changedetectionio/update_worker.py
@@ -2,7 +2,12 @@ import threading
 import queue
 import time
 
-# Requests for checking on the site use a pool of thread Workers managed by a Queue.
+# A single update worker
+#
+# Requests for checking on a single site(watch) from a queue of watches
+# (another process inserts watches into the queue that are time-ready for checking)
+
+
 class update_worker(threading.Thread):
     current_uuid = None
 
@@ -39,6 +44,13 @@ class update_worker(threading.Thread):
                         now = time.time()
                         changed_detected, update_obj, contents = update_handler.run(uuid)
 
+                        # Re #342
+                        # In Python 3, all strings are sequences of Unicode characters. There is a bytes type that holds raw bytes.
+                        # We then convert/.decode('utf-8') for the notification etc
+                        if not isinstance(contents, (bytes, bytearray)):
+                            raise Exception("Error - returned data from the fetch handler SHOULD be bytes")
+
+
                         # Always record that we atleast tried
                         self.datastore.update_watch(uuid=uuid, update_obj={'fetch_time': round(time.time() - now, 3)})
 
@@ -111,7 +123,7 @@ class update_worker(threading.Thread):
                                             n_object.update({
                                                 'watch_url': watch['url'],
                                                 'uuid': uuid,
-                                                'current_snapshot': str(contents),
+                                                'current_snapshot': contents.decode('utf-8'),
                                                 'diff_full': diff.render_diff(prev_fname, fname, line_feed_sep=line_feed_sep),
                                                 'diff': diff.render_diff(prev_fname, fname, True, line_feed_sep=line_feed_sep)
                                             })