If you try to login at https://orbit.theplanet.com/Login.aspx?url=/Default.aspx (use any username/password combination), you can see that the login credentials are sent as a
If you really want to use WWW::Mechanize you can set the header 'content-type' before post
$mech->add_header( 'content-type' => 'application/json' ); $mech->post($uri, Content => $json);