ok just to add some more information to this.
if i entitle a user to the data service that is a member of the group that's not working it comes up with error not provisioned under provisioning status under user entitlement.
if i click the Error:notprovisioned it shows the error message "ERROR_NOT_PROVISIONED Required custom attributes for provisioning are not provided. Contact Administrator for mapping values to custom attributes." and a retry button. Clicking retry and it provisions the user and says it is provisioned.
Even more confused now.