Nobody is saying the standard technique won't save your life IF you have enough altitude. Sounds to me like they almost killed people in training. Either way, since "a lot" of people were *almost* dying, they were obviously doing something wrong.
No the 'almost killed' was a reference to encountering full VRS on operational flights.
For example, many years ago in Oman there was high ground (several thousand feet) above the valley floor and the tactic to get down was a tight spiral descent with low speed and moderate AoB which gave a high rate of descent and made tracking with SAMs or small arms difficult. At the bottom it was necessary to roll wings level and increase speed slightly before pulling in power to reduce the RoD. I know one pilot who just raised the lever and effectively put himself in VRS and crashed - luckily surviving it.
I cannot emphasis enough that Vuichard technique will not recover you from full VRS.
An analogy from fixed wing - incipient vs full spin recovery - incipient spin is easy to recognise and easy to recover from, you actually have to mishandle the aircraft badly to get into a fully developed spin.
The recovery from a full spin is not instantaneous and requires specific techniques. The recovery from an incipient spin is to centralise the controls - almost let go and do nothing works.
Vuichard is effectively marketing incipient spin recovery but selling it as a full spin recovery.
Incipient VRS recovery is easy - raise the lever (the first part of Vuichard) - full VRS recovery is not easy and if you get into it at low level NOTHING will save you except divine intervention or extreme good luck.
If you want to use Vuichard at the early stages, be my guest, but I think encouraging pilots to fly close to VRS parameters, especially at lower levels, in the mistaken belief that Vuichard's 'technique' will save them if it gets worse is just WRONG and UNSAFE.