Captions issues: changes not saving and text encoding weirdness, strange icons * appearing

So I'm working with a translations company that sends me .srt with timecode and wants to have back burned-in subtitles, seems easy right?

Well, not so much.

I've been hopeful with premiere's new feature of batch edit the captions (finally!) but there's a new bug that comes along with it, changes are not saved. (Build 11.1.1)

For example, I change the background color and text size to all my subtitles, and then when I reopen Premiere the work I did isn't there anymore, it all resets back to the default background, size, etc WTF????

Also, it would be good if Premiere did something about the text encoding. In the first place tell which text encoding format are they taking, I guess it's UTF 16 or UTF 8. It would be good if they could take more, since captions and subtitles often have several languages and many weird * icons can result by importing an .srt in portuguese for example.

Now, whenever I change the encoding in another software, like simple Window's Notepad to UTF 8, the strange icons stop appearing but the subtitle goes out of sync! None of the times of the subtitle are respected!

It's driving me crazy.

I ended up using Handbrake to burn in the subtitles, even though I don't have the option to adjust size, font, positions, etc.