LG Voyager VX-10000

I am not receiving the inital txt alert most of the time. I get the beep reminder but not the alert tone. I went to technical support and they told me that it's because the keys are locked. They didn't bother to tell me that I can turn the auto-lock off but I found that on this forum after searching for an hour and a half. So I turned off the auto-lock but for some reason I am still only getting alerts sometimes. What am I doing wrong? I have not been able to find anyone else with this problem on the forum so it's either me or my particular phone. Can anyone help? 😡

PS. I HATE the fact that I can's assign personalized txt alert tones. I txt more then talk so this is really a nuisance. 😢