‘expire’ does what it is supposed to do, and issues a command.
(albeit there is a one second error due to a won’t-fix bug)
That’s it, end of expire involvement.
Next, you rely on autoupdate to predict the likely outcome of the command, and issue a state update.
Autoupdate’s action can be inhibited (vetoed) in some circumstances by channels. Looks like that what is happening here.
No state update, no follow action,
You can test your follow profile by issuing a state update to your Item, see if it triggers the device.
You can circumvent the autoupdate problem by having expire issue a state update, instead of command, which should activate the follow.
Unfortunately that would not then activate the “normal” channel.
We had a thread recently, that showed certain zigbee devices vetoing autoupdate unexpectedly. I wonder if this is related.