I buy a lot of bicycle stuff for my shop and 99.9% of it comes from Asia. All the chrome these days appears to be just straight on top of (poorly cleaned) bare steel. It is so thin it allows rust to form within days of unpacking.

I had a talk to a few platers in Australia and they said that the chemicals are now different, and most of them don't do all 3 processes anymore to save money. It's called "showchrome" these days, and is just for looks, not to protect the steel product.