YOU would like to move your car across the country, but you’d rather not drive it. So you hunt around online for a car transportation company, which will strap your vehicle to a truck and roll it to your destination.

But which of these companies can you trust? A reader found that question is far trickier than it ought to be.

Q. To move our car from Pennsylvania to Texas this summer, my husband and I chose a company based on reviews on TransportReviews.com. The site is the top Google hit when you search for “car transportation reviews.” I soon realized that using this site was a big mistake.

That was clear after I tried to share the lousy experience we’d had with a company called Door to Door Transport, based in Coconut Creek, Fla. The company was a week late delivering our car, and charged us $215 over the estimate. Plus, I had to spend $315 on a rental car for the days when our vehicle was on its way to Texas.