Sounds like the seal (o-ring) may be gone, should be able to pick one up at your local heatmerchants.....
And to be honest, if you hadn't got it serviced in 7 years, you can hardly blame the service engineer!!! In my experience, if these things are left sit to there own devices for so long, disturbing them may result in problems......hence your service interval should be every 12 months as your manufacturer recommends.
If you ignored your car service for 7 years and then had problems after you eventually decided to give it a service you could hardly blame the garage!
And to be fair to your service engineer, have you even let him know?
Tony - A service technician fed up with cheapos!, February 2008