The problem is that you're passing back an array reference from the sub, and using it as-is (without dereferencing).

When you store this return value in yor @response array, the scalar value of the ref is stored as the first (and only) value of @response, and it is this you iterate over.

You must dereference the value you're getting back first, before storing it in your array, as shown in the first post above. Do a perldoc perlreftut for more info