Monitoring replication status from the subscriber I have two databases that are populated by our vendor using replication from their databases. I do not have access to their distributor db. But I want to monitor from our end whether the data has been refreshed as per schedule.

Is there a way to do this? All the blogs/posts I have seen require access to the distribution db.
You can use the canary method to monitor replication status on the subscriber. Check it out here in the "Easy Replication Monitoring: Alert on Latency with Canary Tables" section. 

With this method, you would be writing to a table on the publisher that has just one column. Update the table every minute with CURRENT_TIMESTAMP. Monitor the table on the subscriber and fire off an alert if the difference between the table and the current time has exceeded your threshold.