It's tremendously important to consider Veritas_unfallen's point about people underestimating what it takes. I myself have not made an attempt because I am more interested in studying companies than participating. I know there is a great deal of effort, time, and patience in getting an MLM business off the ground, and generating positive reviews reinforces the ability to do so long term. Visalus complaints seem to be in the middle with almost every Visalus review I read. That is to say that there are some legitimate complaints, but the bulk of them seem to be from unsuccessful prospects.
One of the negative Visalus reviews I read was from a woman that chose not to participate in the program when it was offered from a friend. She described being tricked into thinking she was babysitting and ended up at a Visalus recruitment meeting. She left having not joined Visalus to the disappointment of her Visalus-affiliated friend, whom then asked for the phone number of one of the woman's other friends so that she could attempt to recruit her. When the woman refused, the Visalus-affiliated friend got upset and snapped at her.
To make a long story short, the Visalus-affiliated friend eventually contacted the woman again after some time had passed to offer an apology in the form of a wedding gift. Just before the woman's wedding, the friend offered up $1000 to get the woman involved with Visalus, as the gift! When the woman once again refused, her Visalus-affiliated friend snapped and ended the "friendship", while also not showing up at the wedding. The woman and her husband later found out that the Visalus affiliated couple was a few recruits away from acquiring a new BMW, provided by Visalus.
Stories like these are undoubtedly unpleasant, and they don't offer much in terms of making Visalus reviews or MLM companies as a whole; look good. The problem is that you can't blame the company simply because some distributors have such a shady sense of business morality, and Visalus complaints or any other complaints based on the same type of scenario are prevalent on the Internet. The complaints are certainly worthy of the shame they entail, but they can't be the criteria for judging the validity of a company's product, or business structure. It seems to be the distributors in most MLM company that are most worthy of criticism.