Missing Access Request Message for Welcome Page

Question

I've encountered a weird scenario. We have a welcome page which is NOT inheriting permissions from the site collection. Every time a user goes to this site, lets say office.com he does not have access and the user receives the text box and button to request access (scenario expected). Although if the user goes to office.com/sitepages/home.aspx directly, the user receives a sorry this site hasn't been shared with you message with no way to request access. Any ideas what might be happening?