This frustrates me also. Not being able to easily extinguish the service spanner gives the Main Dealers a huge commercial advantage over the independent garages, and complicates life for the home mechanics.
But 306maxi and T14086 have a valid point too. There are plenty of customers out there who would cynically reset the light without having the car serviced, and then blame FIAT when their engines subsequently blew up. There are garages who would service the car with substandard fluids and cheap components, and refer their customers back to FIAT when it all goes wrong later.
However, there are plenty of folks out there (and on these forums too, I expect) who have the necessary skill, ability and inclination to service their own cars, and they are being disadvantaged by FIAT's policy.
I believe everyone should have the right to service their own car, or to have it serviced outside the franchised network. I also believe that those who make this choice must also then take responsibility for ensuring that the servicing is done properly. FIAT has a right to protect its own interests by rejecting claims for failure caused by improper or inadequate servicing. FIAT does not have the right to use the service spanner reset function to restrict free market competition in the subsequent servicing of their cars.
My suggestion is that the users should have the ability to reset the service spanner, and that resetting the light in this way be recorded on the car's ECU systems in such a way as to clearly identify that the reset was performed by the user, rather than by the franchised dealer network. Anyone could then interrogate the car and retrieve a message such as "service light reset by customer on <date> <mileage>".
