diff --git a/h5pyd/_apps/utillib.py b/h5pyd/_apps/utillib.py
index c36e60e7..34f0ec88 100755
--- a/h5pyd/_apps/utillib.py
+++ b/h5pyd/_apps/utillib.py
@@ -365,6 +365,7 @@ def copy_attribute(desobj, name, srcobj, ctx):
             if ctx["verbose"]:
                 print(msg)
             data = data.decode("utf-8", errors="surrogateescape")
+            src_dt = None  # let numpy figure out the unicode type
 
     # First, make sure we have a NumPy array.
     if is_h5py(srcobj):
diff --git a/test/apps/config.py b/test/apps/config.py
index c5f0c400..fe281a75 100755
--- a/test/apps/config.py
+++ b/test/apps/config.py
@@ -19,7 +19,8 @@ def get_test_filenames():
             "d_link_hard.h5",
             "d_link_soft.h5",
             "scale_offset.h5",
-            "fletcher32.h5"
+            "fletcher32.h5",
+            "undecodable_attr.h5"
     )
 
 cfg = {