diff --git a/build/bin/sage-spkg b/build/bin/sage-spkg
index 2353fd3b06e..94ad35f7dab 100755
--- a/build/bin/sage-spkg
+++ b/build/bin/sage-spkg
@@ -69,12 +69,10 @@
 
 # Avoid surprises with character ranges [a-z] in regular expressions
 # See Trac #15791; some locales can produce different results for
-# character ranges (use C.UTF-8 to ensure UTF-8 default encoding in Python)
-if test x`locale -a | grep C\.UTF-8` != x; then
- export LC_ALL=C.UTF-8;
-else
- export LC_ALL=C;
-fi
+# character ranges; using C.UTF-8 to ensure UTF-8 default encoding in Python
+# introduces extra complications, see #30053, so we don't do it, but
+# assume we are on Python3.x,  for x at least 7.
+export LC_ALL=C
 
 usage()
 {