Sorting by price when products have attributes

Hi All, I have many simple products with attributes as well as many simple products without attributes. The products in the attributes are not visible individually. When I try to sort by price, the products that have attributes are not sorted correctly. For example a product that has attributes with a range of prices from £3.59 to £5.99 will appear in search results after a product that has a range of prices from £459.00 to £659.99. Is there a way to make sure products that have attributes are correctly sorted by price? The other problem I'm having is that if a product that has attributes where all the attributes are the same price, the "parent" product will show a price of £0.00 in a search. I would need it to show  the price of, for example, the attribute that is selected by default when the parent product is viewed. I can't input a price for the "parent" product because when an attribute is selected the price becomes the "parent" price + attribute price. Thanks! (Version 4.6)

Search results sorting by price is based on the product's price.  Not any attributes of the product.  
It would require customization.
(But if a product has multiple attributes the user could select from, how would it know which one to use for price sort?)

"But if a product has multiple attributes the user could select from, how would it know which one to use for price sort?" ...it would be the lowest priced attribute normally...

It's a reasonable choice ;)
In any case, it requires customization, or you need to restructure your product configuration.
For example, if "The products in the attributes are not visible individually", you could give the main product a price, and then treat the attribute product price as "additional".  You may be able to adjust some localization/string resource to indicate that.

OK thanks for your info.