Issue with wildcard preceding value converting to URL encoding

Question

When using a wildcard at the beginning of a search query, it does not seem to work and instead tries to convert the percentage sign to a url entity when the value is an int.

Any ideas on causes/solutions?

This :

https://example.com/rest/V1/products?searchCriteria[filter_groups][0][filters][0][field]=sku&searchCriteria[filter_groups][0][filters][0][value]=%102074%&searchCriteria[filter_groups][0][filters][0][condition_type]=like

{
"items": [],
"search_criteria": {
    "filter_groups": [
        {
            "filters": [
                {
                    "field": "sku",
                    "value": "\u00102074%",
                    "condition_type": "like"
                }
            ]
        }
    ]
},
"total_count": 0