On opensuse leap 42.1, XFCE4 Terminal does not save configuration on exist. It ever creates ~/.config/xfce4/terminal/terminalrc at all
However, manually creating ~/.config/xfce4/terminal/terminalrc and adding configuration to the file works.
I’ve tested this on a several installs, and i’ve also tested to install opensuse 42.1 leap in virtualbox, only selecting time zone, keyboard and xfce4 desktop and leaving everything else to their defaults during installation.
This seems like a bug to me.
Version: xfce4-terminal 0.6.3