diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index ddabb478a..37137b506 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,4 +1,3 @@
-Encoding: UTF-8
 Package: plumber
 Type: Package
 Title: An API Generator for R
@@ -45,6 +44,7 @@ Remotes:
     rstudio/swagger,
     rstudio/httpuv,
     sckott/analogsea
+Encoding: UTF-8
 Collate:
     'async.R'
     'content-types.R'
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 4e6aae8e6..ba964b09f 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -1,3 +1,5 @@
+* Multipart input is not parsed for query strings (#504, @krlmlr).
+
 plumber 0.5.0
 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 ## Full changelog
diff --git a/R/content-types.R b/R/content-types.R
index a3730d0dc..90f8c7b90 100644
--- a/R/content-types.R
+++ b/R/content-types.R
@@ -56,6 +56,9 @@ getCharacterSet <- function(contentType){
   if (is.null(contentType)) {
     return(default)
   }
+  if(grepl("^multipart/", contentType)) {
+    return("bytes")
+  }
   charsetStart <- attr(
     gregexpr(".*charset=(.*)", contentType, perl = T)[[1]],
     "capture.start"
diff --git a/R/post-body.R b/R/post-body.R
index 29a3c24e2..f439bc5c1 100644
--- a/R/post-body.R
+++ b/R/post-body.R
@@ -15,7 +15,7 @@ postBodyFilter <- function(req){
 parseBody <- function(body, charset = "UTF-8"){
   # The body in a curl call can also include querystring formatted data
   # Is there data in the request?
-  if (is.null(body) || length(body) == 0 || body == "") {
+  if (is.null(body) || length(body) == 0 || body == "" || charset == "bytes") {
     return(list())
   }
 
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ parseBody <- function(body, charset = "UTF-8"){
     ret <- safeFromJSON(body)
   } else {
     # If not handle it as a query string
-      ret <- parseQS(body)
+    ret <- parseQS(body)
   }
   ret
 }
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-postbody.R b/tests/testthat/test-postbody.R
index 62a4743db..c9cb8145a 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-postbody.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-postbody.R
@@ -4,6 +4,12 @@ test_that("JSON is consumed on POST", {
   expect_equal(parseBody('{"a":"1"}'), list(a = "1"))
 })
 
+test_that("bytes are ignored on POST", {
+  body <- "dummy"
+  Encoding(body) <- "bytes"
+  expect_equal(parseBody(body), list())
+})
+
 test_that("Query strings on post are handled correctly", {
   expect_equivalent(parseBody("a="), list()) # It's technically a named list()
   expect_equal(parseBody("a=1&b=&c&d=1"), list(a="1", d="1"))