Well, I'm not sure what you've been reading about NLP, or how much experience you have with psychology, but the ideas aren't exactly "out there". Bandler and Grinder took established methods, put them together based on instinct and added some new stuff. The effects achieved aren't new. In fact, most people see NLP as wacky because you can get results with it in hours, not months. Like with anything new, it's heavily criticized, but I've had experiences with it, and I believe it works.

There is very little research evidence to support the efficacy of NLP. It is considered "pseudo-science" by many. A good review of the effectiveness of NLP hasn't been done in the past 20 years. That's because research interest in NLP has pretty much dried up. NLP proponents are still out there, but they don't tend to be in mainstream psychology.