Select distinct field won't return distinct value

I want select distinct field and return value of that field, but I have problem which is: select distinct returns duplicate value. eg, I wan select distinct customer name and id from the customer table. one customer may have different cus_ids since cus_ids are auto increment and depend on the purchased items. so what I want is to select distinct customer name so that I can print customer name and customer id once. here is algorithm; select distinct cus_name, cus_id from customers order by cus_name asc While row is not empty do{ echo"<a href=\"page?cus=cus_id\">costomer name</a><br />"; }