Don't be fooled by the nerdy picture you'll find everywhere of the owner of this business: he is an OPPORTUNIST!!
In retrospect, I must say that all the signs were there...I just wasn't looking. First of all I should have noticed the tacky logo; so 1982, as in an actual logo from 1982 and not 1982 in a cool retro kind of way. (I wonder if 1982 could ever be cool, although god knows they keep trying these days.)

Secondly, now that I'm doing the math, the rate that he ended up quoting me was $60 up to certain amount of hours, & $120 after said such hours. Those are attorney's rates. Okay, so an attorney first year out of a second-rate school, but still! Now, if his tacky logo & exorbitant rates didn't stop me in my tracks, the template quality of his sites should have screamed out at me INCOMPETANCE!! Oh but no. I sord of blamed my business partner for not trying to stop me, but I insisted on using him.

I was willing to overlook the design, as I already had a design in mind. The high rates, didn't quite faze me as I thought he would be able to design the type of site I wanted. But here's where the whole problem began. Running your business 101: DO NOT PROMISE TO DELIVER THINGS TO CLIENTS WHEN YOU KNOW YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF DOING THEM. You'll just piss them off and they'll be on Yelp or other complaint sites telling the whole truth and nothing but! Well, I have to hand it to him though, he is consistently able to get rid of every Yelp review I've written, so when it serves his purposes, he is able to do some things on the web! Kudos to him for that, however I won't ever give up trying!

You know that part in a suspense movie when the hero registers the signs and starts thinking back about everything that happened throughout the course of the movie and sees things he didn't notice before... That's what I felt like. I recalled our first conversations after initial email contact. You see, I was shocked at his initial low estimate. Unfortunately for me, I expressed it OUT-LOUD! Business 101, DO NOT EVER BE SURPRISED AT HOW CHEAP SOMETHING IS. Duh. No wonder I suck at poker! Honest people make the very worst players. The quiet ones who don't do or say anything, would be the less worse players... Then there's those who outright object and feign shock... the better players.

Unfortunately I didn't inherit that gene from my father which would have come in handy in this case around unscrupulous people. That's why the man has made tons of money, and I have not! This is also probably why I get ripped off when I'm shopping in the streets of Korea. The actual Korean girls there look like nice, sweet & push-overs, but they're actually savvy vicious tigers! Especially when negotiating, but I digress...

Now, I'm imagining that you think I had some crazy programming wishes and ridiculously complex design requests. Nope. Pretty much only wanted it to look like Rick Owen's site. Really simple format actually. Request #2 was NO PICTURES OF PEOPLE in it.
Like an idiot, I sent him a deposit for $3000 and after he cashed the check, he then sent us essentially 1 design choice, disguised as 3. They were in template form and THERE WERE PICTURES OF PEOPLE... All 3 "choices" were the same stupid template form.

It was at that moment that my partner pointed out the obvious template format and that Zack Katz was unlikely able to perform our design requests. We had retained him for about 2 weeks, and there's some law about returning money... but when we asked for our money back, he offered us a "store" credit. You can imagine how mad I was. We told him we were terminating our project and were not in need of a credit. We eventually did terminate the project, but at the time had not.

We threatened to sue, so he agreed to give back the money minus the time spent. Seemed okay until i found out he was keeping $1120. Now, please tell me how putting a cut & paste proposal together and 3 cut & paste webpages constitutes $1120 of work?
A. You're reeeeallly slow or B. You're really taking advantage.

To add insult to injury, a few weeks later I googled myself expecting the usual, nothing. I nearly had a heart attack when I find MY name and the stupid Cut & Paste Proposal online. He removed it when we told him, but no matter. I have never experienced such unprofessionalism & ineptitude, ever.

The $1120 I lost on Katz Design is singularly the largest sum of money I've ever thrown away.

In conclusion, this fifth rate company is worth about $12 an hour, but you could probably get a first year graphic designer at $10, who could do an equvilent or better job. I'm not even kidding, because that's about what this self-promoting designer's skill set level is.

-He lied about his ability and did not listen to the client.
-He rates are too high, and is unable to account for his time which is what people do if they charge $120 an hour.
-He will say anything to retain clients and does not follow through on what he promises

There are far too many talented people who do web services and charge a LOT less out there than to have to resort using Katz Web Services. Use Katz Web Services at your own risk, as I've outlined about half a dozen reasons why you shouldn't use them!