[arch-general] Different encoding on tty's and X, solution (or workaround?)

[anti]

I noticed today that my zsh-prompt in the tty's didn't show the same
letters as in the terminal emulators. First I thought I might have a
corrupted ~/.zshrc.local, but while it showed the correct encoding in
geany as well as in the terminal editors in X, it showed a sequence of
letters (sth like "ßäü") instead of "┌─" when editing it in the tty.
Invoking 'locale -a' shows as possible locales "en_GB.utf8", while my
locale in rc.conf was set to "en_GB.UTF-8". Changing the line in rc.conf
to the locale given by locale -a and rebooting solved the problem.
My questions:
1. Did I find a solution to my problem, or a mere workaround that might
create more problems after future updates?
2. Is the incorrect encoding in tty's a serious problem that might
deserve some warning on the forums or even an announcement, or rather
something more or less cosmetic?
3. (Now I admit to be a newbie...) Is this problem maybe limited to zsh,
or does it also affect the majority(?) using bash?