I figured it out...
This might help some newbie like myself who makes the same mistake so I'll answer my own question :)
Turns out I wasn't logged in, go figure. The response was strange though and helped to throw me off, returning the entire homepage. The reason for this is I had blocked my functions files which includes the Ajax responder like so:
function block_users()
{
if( !current_user_can( 'delete_pages' ) ) {
wp_redirect( get_home_url(), 301 );
exit;
}
}
add_action('admin_init','block_users');
I should have known to log in (thought I was) but, such unexpected results and it was friday :)
Also note to anyone who stumbles onto this: if you do want someone to do ajax without being logged in use the no-priviledge version of wp_ajax, wp_ajax_nopriv.
add_action( 'wp_ajax_nopriv_action', 'function' );
In lieu of
add_action( 'wp_ajax_action', 'function' );
The former does not require permission, ie being logged in, to do ajax requests.