Work Item Owner Notification On Create

Altho the users Mail configuration has a flag that seems to indicate the 'owner' of a workitem will get mail on workitem creates, it does not happen.
I do not know if this  is a bug (mail notification code) or a design error (UI should not offer this feature)

still works this way on 4.0.1

Thanks Sam. I noticed that Mail Configuration option as well.  I was hoping it was a problem with our server setup and it could be remedied. 
I'm hoping someone from the Work Item development team will chime in here with some comments, like "yes this is an issue recorded in a work item"  . 
Any suggestions on how to circumvent this via some other method? How do other teams make owners of new work items aware of new work?

Is the owner a member of the Team Area owning the work item? At one point we observed some behavior where an email would not be sent if the person is not on that team/project area. 

Well it seems I was mistakenly given some bad information which prompted this forum post to begin with. The user on the team in question does actually get an email on create when the owner is assigned. This has been answered (shouldn't have been asked).