I have had success with a VV-898 on Elementary OS (Ubuntu derivative). It appears, based on your debug line, that there is an invalid UTF-8 character floating around. I've worked on some drivers, and have looked at the leixen driver a little. I'm not sure if that is a bug in the driver or if the radio allows something non-standard to be programmed in via the menu interface. Are you able to run chirp from the terminal and get any additional error messages? Try posting that and I'll look at the driver to see what I can find. You should probably file a bug report.
How many channels have you programmed? Is it feasible to reset and try a download with memory or two programmed? Is it possible to download from one of the new radios to get a clean image (to see if any download is possible, or you still get errors)? Those are some things I would try to troubleshoot the issue.
If that doesn't point us to a solution, you can try using the OEM software. I tried running it with Wine on linux without success (and without too much investigation). You can try Wine on your Mac or just use Windows if you have access. Another option would be running CHIRP on a live linux usb drive.
Chris, KG7QCP