Relisted items won't sort by expiry date

I have reviewed all threads regarding sorting by expiry date and nothing has worked. It is imperative to be able to sort auction listings by the expiry date. No matter what I have tried, the Auction theme still sorts by Post Date, not Expiry Date. I even tried using the sort by “date modified” feature in general setup, search setup….but it still sorts by post date.

This isn’t as big a problem for new listings as you can simply create new listings with expiry dates further out than the ones you already have published…..but it is a problem when relisting items. If I want to re-list items that didn’t sell, they will always appear at the top of the search results page (in order of the original post date) even if their expiry date is later than other “new” listings. This means that users can’t follow items in order of when they are expiring which is crucial for an online auction. I’m not sure the impact of this if you have member submissions where they have chosen their own auction length since I only have my own listings for now.

Anyone else have the problem of not being able to sort by expiry date for relisted items? Has anyone figured out a way to show all items by auction expiry date (instead of post date/time) in widgets or on the search page? Any help is appreciated.