I have to say that I really don't believe that the dev team understand how economic activity works within this game; why would anyone wish to compete within an auction system against other players, with it's associated and variable cost, for the right to vend a limited set of items for 7 days at a time... when they can have a permanent presence at a predictable rate cost vendor, for any item at all they can store in a backpack, that's no more complicated to set up than double clicking a scroll? And one which, more over, the naughty web pages can script and allow to be searchable out of game?
The Pet Vendor might have been a good idea, had it been accessible from any stables in the world; however I can see a number of design problems that will make it much less useful in those small pens in Magincia, the main one being a Greater Dragon in there is going to make it exceptionally hard to see smaller pets being shown at the same time. But that isn't going to be a problem as it's very, very rare to find a pet worth selling in the first place; 4.0+ pets are pretty common and so do not sell, but the blaze etc or 4.5+ pets which would are literally 1 in 10000 opportunities. Considering that, it doesn't make sense to take the vending 5% cost when, like castles and other high-desire items, you can put up a post here at Stratics and the people with the serious money will come to you.
Also, and this is a major draw back in selling pets, there's no room for the human communication element. I have a 4.3 rated GD and she goes to EM events and dies a fair bit. So I know what her maximum stats are, but she's currently .2 very, very slow Magery regains from them. On a pet vendor, there's no way for me to state "She's actually a tiny bit stronger", nor can you state "Fresh Tame", "Half Trained" etc... which makes a huge difference with regards to the final worth of a pet.
Obviously opening the Vendors to advertising would risk people scamming by claiming "It's really a 5 star pet!"; but there should be a Spoiler tag so people can, if they choose, see what the final stats are to be. This may at least encourage people to use the vendors, as they would be getting extra certainty from this process. As it currently stands though, whilst I like the idea in general, I'm not tempted to get involved with this at all, even as an occasionally serious pet seller myself.
I have already commentated at length about how disappointed I was with the butchery of Ultima's lore and atmosphere in foisting a system of greed upon us irrespective of what we did in the fight for the city of Humility, so it doesn't need rehashing now. But I want to add further disapproval to the shift towards nickle and diming the consumer; I realise UO may be on life support and these are necessary evils to sustain it a few more months, but I still dislike the way that it is being applied with such little regard to anything but the spirit of business. My relationship is with the Lore, not the Store, and whilst it may be profitable, it's not beautiful... and instead of creating a sense of a living, breathing world it just reinforces to my mind the idea that the game is dying. High Seas would have been a breathe of fresh air, if it hadn't been so riddled with bugs and the alien-to-Ultima idea that Grind is the same as Pleasure. These booster packs though seem to have no underlying theme except "You'll give us money for this, right?!". But where have these merchants, and moonshine stills suddenly come from? It's a role playing game, so what role do they have in the virtual world?
don't know about your "payment status"