The MuleProtocolHeadersOutInterceptor is not being added to the fault chain, meaning the protocol headers such as the Content-Type are not being written. From the mailing list: I'm using Mule 2.0.1 with CXF transport, Aegis databinding (frontend="simple"). Exception strategy for each service = org.mule.transport.cxf.CxfComponentExceptionStrategy Trying to migrate services from XFire. I'm having a problem when CXF throws a Fault message- the encoding is set to plain/text rather than plain/xml. Normal soap responses are fine, only Faults have this problem. My client application is using Jaxws and as a result of this cannot catch exceptions, it reports: Could not access remote service at [snip] nested exception is com.sun.xml.ws.server.UnsupportedMediaException: Unsupported Content-Type: text/plain Supported ones are: [text/xml] Caused by: com.sun.xml.ws.server.UnsupportedMediaException: Unsupported Content-Type: text/plain Supported ones are: [text/xml] I have used the SoapUI tool to check this and it confirms that Faults have text/plain encoding. Not sure whether this is a CXF or Mule problem, or whether it's a known issue, can anyone advise?