well i'm running the script on a linux machine, but i'm guessing the csv file was probably created on windows and has some funny windows encoding or something like that...?

I tried using Text::CSV_XS

my $csv = Text::CSV_XS->new({
     'quote_char'  => '"',
     'escape_char' => '"',
     'sep_char'    => ',',
     'binary'      => 1
});
[download]

I changed binary to 1 and that solved a similar problem I had with another csv file, but hasn't made a difference to this file.

Is there a setting somewhere for different types of files, like those created on windows or those from unix?

It sounds like you need to set the eol flag. Look at the file in a hex editor to find out what the line endings really are (your editor may hide some things) or else just experiment with eol set to \012 or \015\012 or \015.