I recently ran into an issue integrating a ServiceStack service with 3rd party software that needed to consume Json.
As the 3rd party was not able to generate the http header Accept: application/json to let ServiceStack auto generate proper content I had to force it in the web service response format:
var serviceResponse = new UpdateDisplayArrowServiceResponse
{
Status = SerialResponse.Status
};
return new HttpResult(serviceResponse, "application/json");
To see all supported formats in ServiceStack it is here