diff --git a/CHANGES b/CHANGES
index ada056a70..7f59f6b09 100644
--- a/CHANGES
+++ b/CHANGES
@@ -6,6 +6,17 @@
 
                                   Changelog
 
+Daniel Stenberg (5 Apr 2008)
+- Based on the Debian bug report #474224 that complained about the FTP error
+  message when libcurl doesn't get a 220 back immediately on connect, I now
+  changed it to be more specific on what the problem is. Also worth noticing:
+  while the bug report contains an example where the response is:
+
+    421 There are too many connected users, please try again later
+
+  we cannot assume that the error message will always be this readable nor
+  that it fits within a particular boundary etc.
+
 Daniel Fandrich (3 Apr 2008)
 - Added test627 to test SFTP with CURLOPT_NOBODY
 
diff --git a/lib/ftp.c b/lib/ftp.c
index 061189c98..769bc8b14 100644
--- a/lib/ftp.c
+++ b/lib/ftp.c
@@ -2563,7 +2563,8 @@ static CURLcode ftp_statemach_act(struct connectdata *conn)
     switch(ftpc->state) {
     case FTP_WAIT220:
       if(ftpcode != 220) {
-        failf(data, "This doesn't seem like a nice ftp-server response");
+        failf(data, "Got a %03d ftp-server response when 220 was expected",
+              ftpcode);
         return CURLE_FTP_WEIRD_SERVER_REPLY;
       }