As with a few of the other posts I have read this was a matter of getting more familiar with the phone. There are two reasons the text message tone wouldn't work: 1) the number format seems to work better when entered 17031234567 rather then having dashes or leaving the one off. 2) if a person has a customized ring tone their message tone has to be changed and because I had not done that every text I received from some one with a custom ringtone had a preset text tone. I hope this helps anyone out who had the same problem.
