Trouble-shooting "message waiting" light

[pitosalas@xxxxxxxxx]

I am not sure this is the right forum to be posting to; if not, is
there a better one? Anyway, I am at my wits end with a simple little
problem which I hope someone can help me understand.

I have a 2 line telephone connected with a single (4 stranded) cable to
the panel in the basement. I have "call answering" from Verizon -
basically home voice mail. When there's a message waiting, the dial
tone stutters, which is how you know to call and check your messages.
The phone has a little light that blinks, even without picking up, to
tell you there's a message waiting too. Somehow it must be detecting
the stuttering itself and lighting up. So far so good.

The problem? When there's a message waiting on line 2 the telephone
detects it and lights up the message waiting light. However, when
there's a message waiting on line 1, it doesn't detect it, which means
that I have to constantly pick up the phone to listen for the
stuttering dial tone. By the way this happened from the very first day
I hooked up the phone.

Here is everything I've done to trouble shoot this:

- I exchanged the phone for a new one. Didn' help. Has the same problem
- doesn't detect a message waiting on line 1.
- I plugged the phone into the corresponding RJ11  on the panel in the
basement, and it works correctly, it detects a message waiting on
either line.
- I reviewed the wiring hook ups (color of each strand) really
carefully and I really believe it is correct, although I don't know a
definitive way to prove it.
- I even switched around some of the colored strands in case that might
make a difference - it doesn't.

Not knowing exactly how the detection works I can't diagnose this
further. Can anyone help?

Thanks!