I'm the owner of a vendor mall with 66 renters, so am pretty well versed in this stuff.
If your vendor had enough gold on it, there are only two possible ways it could have dropped.
- The house owner canceled the contract on purpose for whatever reason
- There was a glitch and the vendor fell. (I've seen this happen to vendors at my house a few times, usually it's right after a patch)
Once the vendor drops, the renter has the ability to reclaim all items and gold for exactly one week by clicking the house sign. As soon as the timer runs out, everything the vendor had is moved to the house's moving crate, which essentially means that the house owner now owns all of your vendors stuff.
Once that happens, the one and only way to recover your items and gold is to ask the house owner if they will give you the stuff back. If the house owner says yes, you get your stuff back (or at least as much of it as the house owner can find, after a few months it's hard to keep track of where stuff came from) if the house owner says no, unfortunately there is nothing that can be done about it.
Personally, I am always willing to return everything that was on the vendor. I do not touch any of the stuff at all for 6 months from when the vendor drops, to give the person time to come back to claim their items and gold. After 6 months I assume the person either forgot about their vendor or quit the game so I will just transfer the items/gold in with my own stuff, since at that point there is no reason to avoid using it when the person might not ever be back.
If the person does eventually come back after the 6 month time has ended, I will happily give them whatever items/gold I still have left from their vendor, and replace any of the gold that may have been used. If I don't have enough gold at the time to repay them, I'll either trade them items of equivalent value or just owe them gold to be paid back when I make more gold.
Hopefully the house owner is willing to work with you to return your vendors stuff.
