Well, I didn't want to get involved because there's *reams* of things you could say about it, but, if you're requesting...

A good, dense and uniform chromium plating, dependant on the buffer layer and underplating, can perform admirably for years, requiring little more than a lick of polish every so often on a selvit cloth. The aeospace industry, despite the environmental problems associated with it, and Germany's demonising of all things hexavalent, still mandate hard chromium plating on things like gears and MLG for a reason.

That said, decorative chromium is a subtly, some may say substantially, different animal because of the thinness of the films involved. Personally, as my understanding of galvanics grew, I moved away from a hardline stance against it, just because it's not sacrificial as put down and therefore accelrates local corrosion at breach sites, to a more forgiving view.

It is true that the application of either copper or nickel, or both, beneath the chromium is the reason for the lack of galvanic protection, as chromium alone *would* protect the steel underneath as zinc or cadmium. However, chromium alone would not plate onto steel in the first place.

If the frame is well prepared, rinsed and cleaned with an alkaline cleaner, not just a hydrocarbon solvent; then given a sound copper strike, a dense nickel layer and then neatly chromed with no voids in any of those three layers, then the chromium will be sound and more than acceptable. The problem is, as with all complex operations, that the risk of error increases exponentially with the complexity, and the slightest error with any one of those three layers will compromise the integrity of the product.

Assuming a sound, good chroming, the only area of concern is the edge of the chroming, where paint will interface. Paints notoriously dislike smooth, high-stress (read: fine, dense crystal boundary, like hard chromium plating) metals, because even etch priming tends to leave a key too fine for the paint film to grab. As a result, the best approach is to etch prime and prime with a serious anticorrosive primer over the edge of the chromium to the interface geometry desired (chevrons, whatever) by a good 2mm and then the paint layers above by a film thickness more, and the lacquer by a film thickness on top -say a total of 200 microns or so overlap. It will require a remask between each operation, and a very steady hand, but I've managed it on a frame I was restoring for my girlfriends father... And restorers I've seen this side of the pond do the same.

Long story short: It's pretty, I like it applied judiciously on some frames, but make sure it's done soundly by a reputable finisher who specialises in it, and you get what you pay for. All the usual caveats.